Middle Kids attempt to find reassurance in Faith Crisis Pt 1's pop sounds

The band use the tracks, especially singer and guitarist Hannah Joy, as a method of searching and understanding happiness and contemplating the nature of belief, broken promises and rebuilding from the ruins of life’s seemingly darkest moments.

Despite the existential territory that informs the lyrical and musical direction the trio do manage to wring many buoyant melodies and arrangements from the pain. As they begin to pick around the meatier subject matter it's that lightness and pop shine that allows beautiful things to form.

As the languid summery vibe of “Bootleg Firecracker” shuffles along Joy is heard to sing about being the eponymous projectile of the title where, “It could be great or a disaster”, in one simple line conveying imposter syndrome, insecurity and hinting that it’s a sure-fire, guaranteed risk being involved in a relationship with her. The other parties in the band of course have vested interests in both these relationships Harry Day is the band's drummer, but much more acutely Tim Fitz, as bass guitarist and Joy’s actual husband.

“Dramamine” demonstrates how, lyrically at least, the album looks at individualism as isolation and sees solitude as loneliness. “You are the only reason I believe in anything / I hope you don’t take this the wrong way”. It hints at how other people can be both an obsession and a transformative force and the song shimmers with a vibrant sense of exuberance, maybe even delirium. Like a lot of the best material on the album there’s a yearning at its heart that’s also sometimes grafted onto impatience which is a volatile cocktail we know can go either way. “Terrible News” with its shouted lines of, “I’m not Scared / So brave / I’ll shout it ‘til you hear me out / Puff up my chest / Put on a dress / Convince myself it’s good enough” feed into harshly parped brass instruments in a discordant rush aimed at selling the narrator’s chaotic train of thought and reluctant acceptance of self-care.

A more slowly strummed “Bend”, full of repressed anger, bending but close to breaking as it builds into a wide anthemic vocal choir with a suitable hectic guitar solo concludes, “I am holding all the pieces in place / But maybe you’ve got to break me to see what I’m made of”, which is kind of a bleak viewpoint. All of the five singles so far released, those mentioned separately, represent the entirety of the stand-out tracks amongst the thirteen collected here, and even some of the remainder are fairly spartan musical interludes with very little fleshing out. So there are no further unearthed gems despite each one foraging in their own way for validation on the scale of sadness, for example on “Petition”, “Philosophy “ or “All In My Head”.

Co-producer Jonathan Gilmore flexes similar musical muscles to his work with The 1975 here while Fitz also holds onto the reins for the band's own internal interests. Joy’s childhood and Scottish heritage is explored to ecstatic effect in the song “Highlands” which is a reflective ode to the old proving grounds of her youth. The lush synth lines and refrains sweep by in that rush of young exuberance as Joy sings, "Wherever you are, we’re just getting started / Out of the dark, into the highlands / Give me your heart, I wanna hide it / And I can’t keep waiting for things to change”.

We’re never far from being reminded that life can hurt or be hard to cope with, often by our own judgement, but there’s also a weight of evidence to show that these hardships can be overcome and turned around if we’re not stubbornly attempting to do everything on our own. Middle Kids seem to have found a renewed faith in themselves as people and as a band on to Faith Crisis Pt 1. Still on the up following the release of their second massively successful album Today We’re The Greatest in 2021, you suspect that Faith Crisis Pt 2 could follow hot on Pt 1's heels if confidence dips again, and they allow themselves that ironic leeway. Still, if they arrive at the same result or better then who’s to say that’s a bad thing?