The highly anticipated debut LP from Sydney’s Middle Kids is only one sleep away, so we thought we’d give you a look at what went down when they headed out of town to record Lost Friends.
It’s no secret that indie-rock trio Middle Kids are one of the brightest up and coming Australian bands around right now. Off the back of their EP Middle Kids, the group gained plenty of traction with Triple J, jumped on a bunch of huge supports including War On Drugs and Ryan Adams, and made their US television debut with an energetic rendition ‘Edge Of Town’ on Conan. Not too shabby considering the EP only came out a year ago.
Having teased and excited fans with singles ‘Mistake,’ ‘On My Knees,’ and ‘Bought It,’ we’ve been licking our lips waiting for their forthcoming full length Lost Friends, which if it’s anything like the singles so far, will be chock full of highly emotive pop-rock that sticks with you long after the first spins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMuDiu1gzdE
Clearly in hot demand at the moment, they’ll also be hitting venues around the country in support of Lost Friends throughout May (tickets here), finishing off the tour with a show at the Opera House for Vivid Festival, before heading back over the US for a big run of gigs.
Check out the behind the scenes polaroids below and be sure to get your hands on Middle Kids Lost Friends by following this link. Captions by Tim Fitz:
Our Studio – WOW just looking at this photo makes me laugh. Our living room is where we recorded most of the album, in all hours of the day and night. We wanted space outside a ‘proper’ studio because it felt more relaxed, spontaneous, interesting.
Hannah Joy in the Zone – Hannah wrote all the songs on Lost Friends, and played a huge portion of the parts. Often she likes to work in solitude but here’s a rare moment when she needed some help recording piano. She’s waving and it’s like “Go away now, I’m ready to work”. I think this was when we were recording ‘Hole’.
Unlikely Reverbs – There was a cool reverb sound in our bathroom that I used on a bunch of the guitar parts. A lot of character. It felt good to just set the mics up in the room to capture the vibe.
The Legend of Harry and Phan – Phan Sjarif engineered Edge of Town so we asked him to come out to the country to engineer drums for the album. He and Harry worked so well together. Harry is such a weapon on the drums, you can throw anything at him, it’s impressive. We got an Air BnB and didn’t tell the lady who owned it that we would be completely rearranging the house to record in it. We left it exactly as it had been, we were ninjas. You can see behind Harry is a mattress to absorb some of the higher frequencies coming off the cymbals.
Peaceful Process – This is an awesome gumtree outside our place that always is a peaceful presence when the song is getting out of hand or not making sense.
Bo on the Cello – Hannah wrote a bunch of beautiful string parts and we asked our good friend Bo to play cello on some tracks (Please, Mistake, Tell Me Something). She was awesome and nailed them so quickly.
Country Twang (3am) – Adding some banjo to something (Lost Friends or Bought It). A lot of the producing work for me was very solitary. The last week was crazy because we were recording stuff up until the day we left for the USA to go on tour. Some of my face went numb at one point, and a friend told me that can happen when you spend too much time being stressed in the studio mixing. I can now feel my face again, and the album is in the world, so that’s pretty cool.
