There is an organic and wild piano riff that careers throughout the new single ‘the last one’ from Naarm/Melbourne band Fan Girl that is a chaotic thread intertwining with the thundering guitars and the sardonic delivery of singer Noah Harris. The overall package has a whiff of a Hammer horror soundtrack with a slightly unnerving carnival edge.
This is a very pulse-quickening release from Fan Girl that immediately sparks attention for its post punk swagger and attitude, like a merger between Muse, the Pixies and a runaway freight train.
The band says of the track:
‘the last one’ was written on the backend of a writing stint in Feb 2024. Like most of these songs, it came together very inspired, and super quickly. It started with a piano line that Vince played into an iPhone voice memo and sample, which we listened to obsessively.
We recorded at our studio ‘Taste Police’ in Brunswick. A lot of the final version of this song was built up from the demo we had done for it – including that iPhone piano. It is one of the least guitar-heavy songs we have ever released, and it notably features a lot of samples and programming. We really wanted the song to sit in a sinister and almost evil villain cartoon-y world. We then sent it off to Oli Barton-Wood (Nilüfer Yanya, Shame, Do Nothing) in London who performed his mysterious mixing hocus pocus before heading to mastering engineer Felix Davis (Porridge Radio, Folly Group, The Murder Capital) who made it loud. And now it is in your hands.
Over the last few months of writing, we have been toying with new sounds, prying open the artistic can of worms, and following our guts, and this song was the first that just landed right where we wanted it.
The accompanying video (directed by Luke Thomas and shot by Richard Clifford) is suitably edged with a heart of darkness and more than a little shard of humour:
The track is out now and available to stream and download here and through the link below. It is off the band’s forthcoming EP.
Fan Girl will headline Cactus Room in Melbourne on Friday 25 May – details and tickets here. The band is set to embark on a run of headline dates throughout September/October hitting venues in Europe and the UK, followed by more shows across Australia.
Feature Photograph: Jess Hauenstein
