© Lauren Baxter 2021.
It’s Splendour In The Grass 2011. Townsville band The Middle East are playing the GW McLennan tent: “We’ve decided this is our last show ever, thanks for being here – it makes it special for us.” Fast-forward eight years and it’s the Thursday morning before Splendour 2019 when The Music gets Jordan Ireland on the phone. “Ah, that time of year, of course,” he replies when he learns of our last minute preparations. Not for Ireland though, he’s been camping down the south coast of New South Wales near Gerroa.
While they now have an almost cultish status following their sudden onstage break-up, at their peak, The Middle East were a supernova of a band – running out of fuel, they collapsed under their own gravity. A simple, “I’m very tired. Until next time,” and they were gone. Looking back and trying to unpack the band’s split, there had been murmurs of an inherent dysfunction that lurked under the shiny surface of movie credits and big-name endorsements. Ireland, however, is far more self-deprecating. “It was probably more just me and my not really feeling like I resonated with the music industry. I didn’t really know how to find a pathway through all of that and through all the nonsense that comes with [it],” he reflects.
It’s something, he says, he still hasn’t been able to do, although time, as is usually the case, has mellowed some of the noise. So much so that earlier this year, to the surprise of many, The Middle East were announced as part of the 2019 Vivid LIVE program. “I think, when you get enough space between yourself and a part of your life which was particularly turbulent, it’s easier to revisit it, having done other things,” Ireland says of the decision to get back on stage. “[With] time flowering out in all its weird circular ways, it makes it a lot easier to go back to parts of your life that were something, at the time, I thought I would never want to get back to.”
But still, regressing to his 17-year-old self and “wearing that mask again” for the Spunk 20th anniversary shows was strange: “[The shows] were weird, they were ok.”
He’s quick to buck the notion of performing as a kind of ‘fan service’ though, pleased the band played on their own terms. “I think if we were going to do [fan service] we would have played everything in the old way or in the way that we feel like people would have wanted things to have been played.”
Importantly for the band, the opportunity felt right. “It became a thing where we started having discussions about maybe doing some more shows a few years ago,” he begins. “We were getting offers coming in and it just never felt right. It felt like, maybe there was an unspoken sort of agreement that if the right thing came up then we would do it. And yeah, getting the opportunity to play the Opera House and for Spunk’s 20th anniversary sort of made it feel special.”
That said, those hoping the run of shows might mean something more for the future will leave empty-handed, Ireland dismissing the notion to say the feeling is “much the same as before”.
“We’re just taking it show by show, and if something comes up that we feel like we want to do then we’ll do it but generally, I feel like something would have to be special for us to do,” he says. “Not just, I don’t know, like going and playing Splendour or something. As honoured as we are to get any offer like that that comes our way, I feel like I think we want to curate and think a little bit more than that.”
No definitive word on new music either, even though all of The Middle East’s original members, according to Ireland, are still ”writing all the time”. “Who knows, something might happen. But no, no plans,” Ireland resigns.
The Middle East will play The Tivoli as part of Brisbane Festival this September, something Queensland fans can thank Jet Black Cat record store’s Shannon Logan for. “I guess we’re not from Brisbane but we’re from Queensland and, I don’t know, it felt a bit of a home show almost and it felt like unfinished business after having those first two shows,” Ireland shares. “Also I’m a really big fan of Shannon from Jet Black Cat and she’s kind of the one who got in touch so it felt like a nice connection to do that.”
That connection to Queensland, and Townsville more specifically, is readily apparent when listening back to the band’s records. “I think it’s all there,” Ireland agrees. “All the loss and the distance and dysfunction of it, they’re all there. It was almost like escapism, the music we were making, in a way to offset this weird, I don’t know, I don’t want to get too hectic with the adjectives but it was almost like a literal dystopia up there being swamped in between the army and the mining and the racism. But yeah, I still have a real special place somewhere in me for up there… It will always be something special for me.”
That importance of time and place is something Ireland is looking for in regards to those “special shows”, seeking “settings that are a more reflective space for people to sit in with the music”. As for what longtime fans of the band can expect at The Tivoli? “I don’t rightly know,” he laughs. “I think they can just expect themselves, because that’s all anyone can do. I don’t think that we can do anything for anyone. I think we’re just gonna get there and play our music and people can come and listen and think about their lives.”
Original article: The Music August 2019 Issue