It’s been five years since The Middle East famously broke up as they took the stage to play Splendour In The Grass and still they are dogged by questions of a potential reunion at every turn.
As it turns out, it could well happen and almost did last year. Speaking to triple j for a new Unearthed feature on the band, co-frontman Rohin Jones didn’t exactly bin the proposition.
“We got together late last year and just talked about the potential and how everyone felt,” he told Unearthed. According to the muso, a Middle East reunion is still very much on the table.
“It’s something I think for us just has to feel – this is a really shitty answer – but it just has to feel right at the time,” Jones, who’s currently enjoying his own solo career, continued.
Coming back together and writing something as a complete group of people in that context again is entirely dependent on us all arriving at that same desire to do that.”
“I don’t think anyone in the band is going, ‘that can never happen again’ as vague and ridiculous as that is – it is vague and ridiculous to us as well.”
In fact, Jones worked with former Middle East bandmates Mark Myers and Mike Haydon on his upcoming debut solo album and admits he sometimes write songs that would suit The Middle East.
“We were an extremely confused band,” singer and guitarist Jordan Ireland recently told FasterLouder when asked about what precipitated the band’s very public split.
“All the hype and excitement surrounding our little knot of young and very naive country kids became really daunting, really quickly and I think you can really hear that in those recordings.”
Ireland added: “[it’s] sort of comical how well we imploded; we were just completely not ready for it. I was pretty ego-crazed and I think by the time we had even started recording the album we were probably already selling ourselves lies.”
