By Claudia Biaggini
It’s pretty plain obvious that Heaps Good Friends make really good music, and their fist-pumping-ly good, dance-inducing tunes are becoming well recognised within the Australian music scene. The trio produced a consistently impressive string of singles last year—so impressive that their banger of a tune ‘Let’s Hug Longer’ became the 9th most played track on Triple J in 2017. The band’s feel-good pop anthems clearly have won the charm of many, and how can they not with such witty lyricism? Now armed with their freshly new EP, Hug Me, Catalyst got the opportunity to chat with Heaps Good Friends’ Emma Fradd.
You guys exploded onto the Australian music scene last year, did you ever expect to reach such success in such little time?
The success of ‘Let’s Hug Longer’ really took us by surprise! We had written 3 tracks prior that didn’t get as much attention. To be honest, right after we wrote ‘Let’s Hug Longer’, Nick and I kept ‘umm-ing’ and ‘ahh-ing’ about whether it was any good or not! which is hilarious given the circumstances that followed!
This is the first time you will be releasing a body of music; are you guys nervous to present Hug Me to the world or excited to share it with everyone else?
We are SO excited to share Hug Me with the World! We have been working hard and are so proud of what we’ve come out with! Each song has a special place in our heart, and we know some of our fans have been begging for some new music from us for a while! It’s a cute little milestone for us as we begin this journey.
You guys hail from Adelaide, what is the music scene like there? Did it have any kind of influence on your music and or your creative processes?
Nick works a lot with Adelaide artists, and Dan our drummer is in another great band called TOWNS. I live in Brisbane however and prior to that lived overseas for 7 years, so I am just coming into some of the music in Adelaide now. It’s pumping! There’s such a range of genres too, Timberwolf, Neon Tetra and Zen Panda are some favourites. A lot of our influence to writing the tracks came from a Korg Poly 800 Synthesizer, every sound on that bad boy is amazing.
The music video for ‘I Could Eat a Full Packet of Yo Yo’s’ was directed by you three and Aaron Schuppan, could you explain the creative vision behind it? How did your music translate into the video?
‘I Could Eat A Full Packet of Yo Yo’s’ was such a fun clip to shoot. Nick had the idea of the Capri Theatre in Goodwood, Adelaide. Going inside was like being on a movie set, and they have this incredible organ with about 673 different settings on it. We just wanted to make a fun video for ‘Yo Yo’s’ because we figured the track is a dancey one! We also wanted to introduce ourselves as fun and friendly for those who maybe hadn’t seen us live, and we thought giving ourselves the theatre-worker personas we did, captured that, especially nervous Dan.
‘Olympic Sneakers’ and ‘Let’s Hug Longer’ can be described as these youthful synthy dance anthems, can we expect something similar for the rest of the Hug Me EP?
Yes! There are a couple of other flavours on the EP, arguably they could all be boogie-worthy! ‘Online Shopping Trolley’ is probably our most different track, the feel is a bit darker, but the lyrics are still light hearted and fun. and ‘Cry Like A Psycho’ is FULL of vocal harmonies, ending with a cheeky guitar solo.
What can fans expect from your shows, what goes down at a Heaps Good Friends live show?
You can expect a fun atmosphere, a safe and friendly space, we really love getting to know our fans so hopefully we’ll be meeting more and more of them! You should probably wear some dance-friendly shoes and you can expect to fall in love with our opening acts too!
You’ve got a huge selection of Aussie support acts for your tour, did you handpick them yourselves?
Ooh speaking of! We did handpick most of them from a long list of options! Really looking forward to meeting them and jamming out to their tunes. The Gruvs in Brisbane and Slowcoaching in Melbourne in particular!
After the Hug Me tour wraps, have you any plans for the rest of the year? Is there any sort of direction that you’d like the band like to follow?
I’m really excited to dive into Heaps Good Friends‘ future with the team we have backing us. Plans for the rest of the year: to write more music and hopefully to do another tour! Maybe buy another synthesiser if the budget permits..
You can catch Heaps Good Friends in action on March 24th at The Workers Club. Tickets are available from their website. You can listen to the Hug Me EP on Spotify.