Review: Middle Kids at Freo.Social

Middle Kids at Freo.Social
w/ Mia Wray
Friday, May 24, 2024

Even if you weren’t familiar with Middle Kids, the frenzied reaction to Edge of Town from the sold-out Freo.Social audience on Friday night would tell you everything you need to know about the depth of the band’s resonance. As the crowd sang and clapped along, confetti rained down from the stage in celebration of a song originally uploaded to triple j Unearthed that took on a life of its own to gain platinum certification. Even better than that frenzied celebration was there were many more moments like that to behold across the course of the evening.

Opening the night was Mia Wray, who has kept Middle Kids company on the entire Faith Crisis Pt 1 Australian tour. Wray opened a condensed yet eclectic set with her gorgeous A cappella staple, Work For Me. Underpinned with finger clicks, the song afforded Wray’s ample vocal prowess sufficient motivation for curious concert-goers to be drawn closer to the stage before a succession of soaring piano driven ballads offered them plenty of reason to stay.

Across the course of Never Gonna Be the Same, Needs, and Evidence, Wray delved into everything from major label record company entanglement, stalkers, and bad sex. Forsaking piano for acoustic guitar, Wray then launched into Not The Same As Yesterday before closing out her set with an intriguing hybrid composition partly penned on the back of a vomit bag on her recent flight to Perth and rounded things out with the chorus from The La’s There She Goes.

Middle Kids then bounded to the stage amidst a blanket of smoke and a blaze of lights to throw forth a set brimming with musical quirks and sublimely crafted songwriting. There were idiosyncrasies aplenty across the Sydney-based quartet’s performance—from Miles Elkington and Tim Fitz’s animated guitar play to Hannah Joy’s unique guitar style of playing left-handed with a normally strung right-hand instrument strummed upside down—all of which vivaciously combined with Joy’s seductive vocal dexterity to deliver some of the most finely tuned and infectious alternative rock songs to find their way to Fremantle.

The set was a cross section of Middle Kids old and new. Dramamine, from the band’s recently released third album, Faith Crisis Pt 1, was followed by Your Love, the opening track from their 2017 self-titled debut extended player, before the ensemble headed back to the future with The Blessing. From its humble beginnings, the song beautifully built into a lush and captivating chorus before falling away to near silence in readiness for it all to surge again across to the next verse. It’s a dynamic Middle Kids have refined to an artform.

The indie rock blitz of R U 4 Me?, from the band’s 2021 second album, Today We’re the Greatest, was followed by Mistake from its 2018 predecessor Lost friends, before the quartet returned to their sophomore album for one of the highlights of the night, a beautiful rendition of Bad Neighbours. The tender guitar interplay of Elkington and Fitz provided an irresistible instrumental bed over which Joy’s sublime vocals effortlessly soared.

With Old River followed by Your Side, Forever the two guitarists and drummer Harry Day then left the stage. Forsaking guitar for piano Joy then led the audience through a gorgeous solo rendition of All in My Head. While the recorded version of the song from the band’s new album features vocal accompaniment from Dave Le’aupepe, the ‘exile’ of Gang of Youths frontperson on this night left Joy’s melancholic performance wanting for nothing. And with such heart-wrenching delivery of lines like “I sit just below your low bar,” how could it not?

After the celebratory fervour of Edge of Town, Joy put down her guitar for a slow-motion sway through recent single Bootleg Firecracker before reenergising the crowded by answering its repeated calls for a pulsating rendition of Stacking Chairs to close out the set.

The quartet returned to the stage for an encore that included Cellophane (Brain) and the crescendoing Bend. The final song ebbed and flowed before the instrumentation faded away for one last time leaving Joy to gently float out the song’s final line: “maybe you’ve got to break me to see what I’m made of," into the night.

BRETT LEIGH DICKS

Photos by Taylor Broadley