CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 150: FAN GIRL ON EVERYTHING REAL OR STAGED
Interview by Adeline Chai.
We had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Naarm/Melbourne-based indie-rock band Fan Girl, about the release of their highly anticipated EP, real or staged. After taking time to re-evaluate their place in the industry, Fan Girl seems to be at their most self-assured in this present moment. They’ve returned with an even clearer and more grounded outlook of the world, which seeps beautifully into this EP that discusses a range of subjects from unreliable memories to climate change.
Vincent McIntyre, Noah Harris, Luke Thomas, and Tom Dowling reveal what they each bring to the creative process, letting go of certain beliefs, and what’s in store for the band.
FMM: Congrats on your EP, real or staged! It’s amazing. How are you guys feeling now that it’s out in the world?
Vincent: I think there's a big sense of relief.
Luke: Relief and excitement. I think it's a lot of work and a lot of things to get it done, but yeah, it's cool to have it out there.
Noah: It's also nice that once you release something – before you do, there's such a sense of detachment with the songs that you just push them out. Once other people hear them, you're like, well, yeah, these are songs we wrote that we put a lot of love into and when you get that reflected back at you, it’s always a nice little treat.
FMM: You performed it [the EP] live as well before you released it, right?
Vincent: Yeah, yeah! We did a pre-release show, like a sneak peek thing. I mean, we're playing a lot of those songs live anyway but they’re new to the set for sure and it was really nice. We’ve been touring heaps for the last 2 or 3 months so we played all those songs live, particularly the unreleased ones at the time to get a vibe check on them and see if people are digging them. Yeah. Hopefully, they are.
FMM: That’s great! The EP feels reflective of your internal world, but also the external state of the world, more broadly. Does the concept of the EP reflect what you guys were feeling at the time of writing and recording it?
Luke: That's a very good question.
Vincent: Yes. *laughs*
Noah: This is probably the most creative we've ever been as a band. When we need to write a song, we can just do it, and we can communicate really well and we work really quickly. We’ve been touring lots and working really hard, but it is probably the most unwell we've all been mentally as a band as well.
Everyone: *laughs*
Noah: That’s probably why the EP is a bit dark but it also means it's fucking good, we think. So yeah, if that's what you mean. And also, the world is fucked as well. So that's probably why it's big, dark, and catchy.
Vincent: It's a weird time to be attempting to make music in, says everyone all the time anyway but it definitely feels like a pretty weird time to be doing that. I think it's taking years off my life but it's also kept me alive, if that makes any sense. It goes both ways. I’m definitely glad to have it [the EP] done as well. I’m pretty happy about it. I listened back to it the other day for the first time properly on the day that it came out.
I hadn't really appreciated it as a body of work, as opposed to just singles that we put out, which it wasn't either of those things specifically, but I hadn't really sat there and enjoyed it [the EP] after the fact. Yeah, it was nice. It was nice to be like, “Oh, these all sound like songs and we did that.”
Tom: It is such a tumultuous time and there is so much going on in the music industry and in the world at large, in everybody's lives, but this is almost a response of, “Oh, fuck it, let's dance.” It [The EP] was made very quickly and spontaneously and without real outside influence. Yeah. It reflects that.
Vincent: It definitely felt like it was made in a bubble that we'd created for ourselves to be creative. We might still be stuck in that bubble, but the music's left the bubble, which is good. Good for the music.
FMM: Speaking of bubbles, I feel that there’s a narrator or a character almost, in their little bubble in every track of the record. Every song feels like a distinct story that connects to a larger picture. Was there a particular world from these songs that you wanted to continue working on when you were recording?
Vincent: I think we lucked out with the EP name because I think that plays a bit into the concept of the bubble or us working internally versus in reality. I think that ended up working really well and in my head, the EP name ends up representing what joins all the songs.
Noah: I don't think it was a conscious thing like, “We're going to write about this.” I just think that we were probably thinking a lot about similar things. I don't think the narratives are all about the same thing but there's probably the same sentiment and feeling within them that connects them.
FMM: With your EP name being real or staged, is there anything that you guys are still trying to figure out is real or staged?
Vincent: Oh, like conspiracy theories? *laughs*
FMM: You can interpret that question however you like!
Vincent: There’s one thing that comes to mind for me a lot. I was thinking about this the other day when we were doing an interview and we were talking about the EP name but I didn't put it in the interview, so this is an exclusive! *laughs* real or staged, what was I saying? No, it's gone. Come back to me. Come back to me. What was the question again?
Noah: If there are any things that we think about that might be real or staged.
Vincent: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Okay. So I was thinking about the EP name and I was thinking about this duality of streaming being so tough at the moment. We’ve been lucky that people seem to be finding our music and all that stuff but it is this really tough thing of…you look at streams and some of the metrics that the music industry emphasises you need to be doing well at, and we look at those and we're doing fine. It's not bad. It's not amazing. It's just a good, solid, and organic response. Then we go out and play these shows – I'm not saying all the shows are sold out – and there's this very community level of people showing up that all seem really interested in the music and in the band.
So I was thinking about the real or staged concept as this whole thing of, you put music out in a format and sometimes it doesn't always necessarily – not that I'm not worried about this – do what maybe the industry wants it to do for you but then you get out into reality at a show or people messaging you or whatever it might be, and the reception has been really, really wonderful. That kind of duality has been something I've been thinking about a bit. That’s my experience.
Tom: Also following up from that, one of our semi-defunct bands recently had its Spotify account hacked and is now distributing AI generated music, but we’re doing better than ever, so. *laughs*
Vincent: Yeah, that would be my call on that. I'm not much for a conspiracy theory. I'm a bit of a traditionalist but yeah that's where the different forms of reality are blurring in a very relevant and musical way. Do you guys have something saucier than that maybe?
Luke: It's not saucy but I just think with that question as well, it’s like, what people see of the band and everything? What are we perceived as versus what's actually happening on the ground? There’s a lot of the duck's legs going crazy underwater kind of thing. We're pulling songs together, recording things, doing photo shoots, and doing music videos.
Vincent: Yeah, we should start doing really realistic social media content, where it's just videos of us very silently sending emails for 45 minutes at a time. *laughs*
Tom: Yeah, sorry mate, it's just us having a panic attack.
Noah: I think as well, a general thing of the band is that often we have such a big, unruly, grand sound, often when people watch us play, it sounds wanky but they'll see us play somewhere and they're like, “You guys would fit better in a stadium.”
It’s not like you should be in a stadium because you're good. It's just a big, grand sound. I feel that kind of works because all the songs are about quite personal relationshipy things. We also make music in such a small group of people. The whole project is not grand but when it comes out, it explodes into a grand thing, which kind of fits in with the real or staged vibe as well.
FMM: Vincent, I think you in particular, did an interview in 2018 – and feel free to correct me if you don’t feel the same anymore – but I think you said something along the lines of how you guys aren’t visual people, in relation to your album art. What sets apart music and sound for you compared to other creative mediums? Anyone else can take this question too.
Vincent: Something comes to mind for me. Sound makes sense in my brain and visuals don't really make sense in my brain. So that definitely sets it apart. I think that if I see a visual that really stirs something in me, it normally stirs something in me that I absolutely cannot explain at all. It's like a completely inexplicable feeling. Whereas I think music, music stirs me in a more familiar way, if that makes any sense. That might just be because I make music and I don't make visual art but yeah, I don't know. I feel they're very separate. The visual side of the band has been tied in with the music a lot more in the last year or so, and that's been really nice to see and make sense of.
Noah: I think that's also because Luke probably is more visual than Vince and I.
FMM: Yeah, I was going to say! Luke, you directed and filmed the music videos, right?
Vincent: You’ve done amazing research.
Luke: Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like the band's come a long way with the visual stuff. We all work on the ideas now and not that we’re necessarily putting more time into it, but there's definitely like, we’re thinking about it more. We’re doing it in house as well so it means there's just naturally more touch points to get it to a point where everyone's happy with it. Obviously the music's always the first part but there’s just more consideration [for the visuals] at the moment, I feel.
Vincent: I feel maybe the goal over time -- and it's not so easy when we're so pressed for time and money -- is that the visuals are as much of a fun, creative aspect as the music is. It’d be an extension of that or an opportunity to do something different. So yeah, whether or not it happens, that is a whole other thing but you know, we’ve given it our best.
FMM: Well, I think your music videos are doing great. I watched a couple of them and I feel there's this comedic element to them as well, which I think is so important because yeah, you take yourselves seriously but at the same time, I think it's also so important to not take yourself seriously sometimes. So, yeah, I really appreciate that.
Luke: Yeah, it’s done on such a budget that they kind of have to be funny. *laughs*
I think that's also part of our personalities as well, with what you were saying, it's serious music, serious band but I'd hope to say we're pretty fun. I feel like I'm also visually kooky with the music video stuff, so I think that might be a little bit of me in there as well.
FMM: What kind of individual personality dynamics do you guys each bring to the creative process? Does it work most of the time?
Vincent: This is great, this is a great question. Yeah, it definitely works. I feel like Tom is just the level headed man that comes in and crushes it.
Tom: Just a working man.
Vincent: Well, you know, and hopefully without the same baggage that we put upon ourselves.
Noah: You can't do your own.
Vincent: No, I'm not doing my own.
Noah: There's always one person in a band where if they didn't have them, nothing would ever get done. Vince, he just pushes us all to be better and get shit done.
Luke: What about Noah?
Noah: I can’t do me. Noah's the cute one. He's got that hair.
Tom: I think you bring a, not to throw this word into it, but a soul to the music – an emotional, more psychological bent to what is otherwise very loud music.
Vincent: That's a good one.
Luke: That's a good one!
Vincent: And then Luke?
Luke: Uh oh.
Vincent: Wait, who's doing Luke? Luke has to do it himself.
Everyone: *laughs*
Luke: I feel like I could do myself!
Vincent: Go!
Luke: I feel like I'm just a good glue factor. Yeah, I just help balance things out and I think as well, having more people – if you had a duo or a solo person as a dynamic, I think there's more tension and there's a lot more pressure.
When you put 3 or 4 people in it, you can start to level things out. There's something to having more people and I feel like I'm a good glue just to sit in between everyone.
Vincent: We’ve known each other long enough that we all have different roles within the band. We're also very strong across the board, we’ve got different dynamics and we all serve each other in different and specific ways that are much deeper than just four people playing music together necessarily. So that's a big part of it as well.
FMM: You guys touched on it a bit but as you said, you have this very grand sound and primarily you make rock music but I think you also do have really delicate moments from your EP and previous stuff as well. How would you describe your musical identity or what do you want to achieve sound-wise?
Luke: I reckon I could…my immediate reaction to that is, there is no particular sound that governs the band. I think what makes the music the way it is. It’s the people creating it and the time that it's made in. There shouldn't be any sonic restrictions. That’s why there's an acoustic song. There are songs without drums. Then there are more conventional rock songs but they're all a flavour of Fan Girl in a sense. I think that's what we were striving for when you guys were writing, not to be limited by the instrumentation.
Vincent: It’s a very unrestricted playing field for what is three or four somewhat restricted creative minds. There’s a bunch of stuff that we haven't released – which I haven't even really worked on that much – that are miles away from what even this EP sounds like. Whether or not that even comes out is a whole other thing, but I think we're always working on whatever is feeling good at the time and whatever is feeling good at the time might not inherently, on paper, read like a Fan Girl song. I think that, yeah, once you get us and whoever else we're wanting to involve in the music at any given time, those characters shine through regardless of whether there's heaps of guitars or there's loud drums or whatever there might be that gives it a signature sound. I think that's the major thing that ties it together for sure.
Luke: Also the recorded versions of the songs aren't necessarily the live version of the songs as well. That’s not a restriction either. I think on eleveneleven, for example, when we play live, it's guitars and everything but on the record, Vince was playing around with synths and samples. There was a clave playing what we would play on guitar live, but on the record, it's a clave, so there are different textures. I think that's cool as well.
FMM: That’s amazing. With your song, away, I read that there were 13 different versions of the song before you distilled it down to one. I wanted to flip the question and ask if there was a song that you were just really sure of right off the bat of writing or recording it?
Noah: On the EP?
FMM: Just in general!
Vincent: I have an answer for this, but I don't know what you guys think.
Tom: I was going to say the last one.
Vincent: Yeah, the last one for sure was very self-assured, but I think even more self-assured was Little Pig. I think that one, Little Pig, just showed up. By showed up, I mean we spent ages trying to write that song.
Everyone: *Laughs*
Vincent: But when it did eventually arrive, it just showed up, and it was the statement song of the EP, I think. It's also the first song on the EP and I don't know what you call it, but it feels like the code of conduct for the EP or something. It’s a bit all over the shop, it's kind of grand and it's kind of dark, and it moves in this really weird way. In some ways I just think it's maybe the most self-assured thing we've ever put out. It's just really on its own two feet. Not saying it's good or bad. It’s just like, whatever it is, it’s happy to be that. I feel like I put the demo together, we looked at the demo, and it was pretty much what it was from the get go. So that might be my call for that.
Luke: I think there was so much chemistry coming out when that song was happening. I'm pretty sure the first vocal pass that Noah demoed was what it ended up being.
FMM: As you said, the EP is very self-assured. What did you have to let go of in terms of beliefs and whatnot to arrive to this process of putting out a record and doing it on your own terms?
Vincent: Oh, so much, personally. I feel like two or three years ago, I was on this whole thing of we have to do an album. We have to do another album, we've put out an album in the past. That's the statement that creatively I’m always most drawn to.
Noah: It’s probably what we've all consumed too. Very rarely, if we're in the car, we'll put on a playlist. We always just put on someone's record.
Vincent: An EP or an album for sure. I think that it was like, “Oh, it has to be this. There has to be like a real finality to it and that's the album and blah, blah, blah.” I think there was also a bunch of industry stuff – we used to be a band that sat very differently within the music industry and made very different choices based on different ideas of what was going to serve us. That all kind of fell away when we just started doing it only for ourselves.
Obviously we're still putting music out and we want people to hear it and stuff, but it just got to the point where everyone's busy, we’re all making big concessions to be here and make this happen – you have to try and make it as enjoyable and as fun as you can.
We made a bunch of changes about how we want to go about that, and I think it's served us so well. I think the EP is definitely one of the fruits of that labour. The last two or three months of touring has been some of, if not the best touring the band's ever done. The most fun.
So I would say, dropping the concept of the album as being the only way to release a body of music, because it isn't, but also just making sure that whatever we're doing, be it the releasing of music, the creating of music, playing live, making videos, whatever it is – the first box you need to tick on any of that is, are we here for the right reason? Are we having a good time? I think that's been game changing.
FMM: That’s so interesting. To wrap everything up, my last question is, if you could give people three songs to listen to from Fan Girl to get someone started on the band, what would you pick?
Luke: This is such a good question.
Noah: Let’s do this individually. That'd be funny.
Vincent: Alright. I'm not going first.
Tom: As someone who hasn't been in the band the entire time, I think I’ll start.
Vincent: There you go!
Tom: So, Out Again, off the record. Then, it would be…I’m gonna say react (react). Then I would say, from the EP, it would be little pig.
Luke: That’s all very good.
Tom: I think that encompasses three different areas of Fan Girl pretty well. As someone who's spent a lot of time watching before being in the band.
Vincent: I’m going to say little pig and I'll say away. And then I'll say our next single, [redacted].
Everyone: *Laughs*
FMM: Wow, there you go.
Vincent: Oh, shit. I probably shouldn't have said that! It'll be out very soon. I would say those are the three songs.
Noah: Can you beep that? *laughs*
FMM: I'll censor the name for you, don’t worry!
Vincent: You can put a fart noise on top of that. That'll be fine. Anyway, you two.
Noah: Um, I've got…can I do four?
FMM: No you can’t.
Vincent: You have to do three!
FMM: I’m joking, you can do four! *laughs*
Noah: I'm doing four as crucial moments in our history. So I reckon Small Town. Wait, did I say it right.
Tom: Yeah, you did.
Noah: Just because that was the first song we were released that got us a booking agent at the time. That helped us get really good gigs and that was really good. Then after Jack died and we didn't play for a while again, we made Fox Song and well, that relaunched us, which was good as well.
react (react) helped us get into a more international sphere, which was good. I think little pig is the last one because it was…is that four? Yeah. little pig, just because I think that’s a nice through the wall for this EP as well. They just all seem like really good milestones in the history of the band.
Luke: Cool. Mine’s like…I'm just the same as everyone. I really like little pig and away. I think away is the dark horse. I've actually had the most comments about that song. People really like that song, I like that song. I like Out Again as well. That was a fave back in the day. So that's my three.