I first heard The Middle East about a year ago, when I began to preview some of their tunes before Bonnaroo. I managed to catch their sticky set and was impressed with their calm, melodic, acoustic-based tunes amidst the chaos of the heat and sweat.

Now, a year later, The group is dropping its debut LP in the U.S. on July 12. I Want That You Are Always Happy--a title that I personally loved before listening to any of the music. The group is large: seven people long with the depth of sound to show for it.


The album has a versatility to it that you don’t always anticipate from a group early on: the first two tracks have a haunting ambient sound about them, and I imagine listening to them in a dark room on a dreary day while I ponder what it feels like to die. The songs ebb and flow and stretch into dissonant crackles behind eerie, yet beautiful pieces of broken piano chords; it’s like Radiohead’s “Videotape” got drunk and slurred its speech with The Low Anthem’s “Charlie Darwin” and then cried a little bit.


“As I Go To See Janey” moves into a folkier realm with the lead singer’s voice gliding with ease over an array of hard-to-understand lyrics that place me back again to Radiohead’s In Rainbows and and then the album begins to show off its versatility through the next several tracks. The pace picks up (as does the singer’s falsetto) and the harmonies become more prominent.

Right in the middle of the album is where they really win me over: “Land of the Bloody Unknown” highlights what the group does best: They weave together subtly pulsing percussion, an array of instrumentation, and a memorable melody sung with flawless harmony--all of which is done in such a way that could impress the snobbiest of our elitists here in Nashville. I think that “Months,” “Hunger Song,” (not to be confused with the immensely popular novel, The Hunger Games), “Dan’s Silverleaf,” and “Ninth Avenue Reverie” are some of the albums’ most shining moments--whereas some of the interludes and wordless dissonance seem like unnecessary fillers.

The Middle East - Mt. Morgan / Hunger (Live on KEXP)


Overall, I’ll be listening to this album for a long time; I want it on while I drink tall cups of coffee and sit on the couch instead of go to work, and I want to play it while I have a long drive to make through the summer night. Its somber yet peaceful and its haunting without being overly depressing. And, regardless, everyone should hear it--somewhere, sometime.