Temperate Touch, Tropical Tears

As each former member of The Middle East emerges with their own projects in that band’s wake, Jordan Ireland’s debut as Stolen Violin reconfirms him as an artist who defies definition, writes MATT SHEA.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] This is how Jordan Ireland wanted it. If you remain confused by the sudden break-up of The Middle East, the Townsville native has provided a Rosetta Stone. Temperate Touch, Tropical Tears is obstinately singular – a fuzzed-out middle finger to the spectral, toe-tapping folk music with which Ireland made his name.

It makes sense. Produced under the Stolen Violin moniker with the help of good friend Jake Core and Machine Translations’ J Walker, this collection of eight-track recordings feels like a natural conclusion to the right angles and foot-dragging rhythms that dogged I Want That You Are Always Happy – only without a band getting in the way. If you’re a fan of ‘Blood’-era The Middle East, there’s not much for you here.

“The album has that distance, as if he’s singing about the memory of an emotion rather than the emotion itself.”

For everyone else, though, Ireland remains an artist of interest. The intricate melodies still tumble about his songs, the vocals slipping appealingly off their notes. Ireland once described The Middle East’s songs as simply being guitar music, and that feature at least remains. Here he deals by turns in narcoleptic acoustic strums and suppressed electric arpeggios. There’s little or no percussion; just the occasional lament of a violin on the ghostly ‘Took Starlight Seven Years’ and bushranger waltz of ‘Floorboards’, or some approximately layered vocals on ‘New Amnesia Skies’ (whose cooing chorus is the closest Ireland comes to mimicking his former band) and the shrugging, sighing album closer, ‘World of Sun’.

It gives Temperate Touch, Tropical Tears a sonic purpose and sense of naked exploration, but not a great deal of emotion. Ireland recorded in Melbourne – about as far away from the tropics as mainland Australia gets – and the album has that distance about it, as if he’s singing about the memory of an emotion rather than the emotion itself. It’s like exploring a dusty house, looking at sepia-tinged photos, wondering what they might mean to the people who took them.

But then, that’s part of the appeal of Temperate Touch, Tropical Tears. There’s a sense of study, of song cycle, of once-removed storytelling. Ireland frequently swings and misses here, but the album nevertheless leaves The Middle East firmly in the singer-songwriter’s past while re-establishing him as an impressive artist who defies definition. Australian independent music is much the richer for having him in its constellation.

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‘Temperate Touch, Tropical Fears’ is out now on vinyl through Spunk and digitally via iTunes. East Coast tour dates below.

Thurs, Sept 12 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW
Sat, Sept 14 – The End, Brisbane, QLD [free, matinee gig from 4pm]
Sun, Sept 15 – Southside Tea Room, Brisbane, QLD [7pm]
Thurs, Sept 26 – Gertrude’s Brown Couch, Melbourne, VIC