Famous are a band with a name so purposefully ironic that even trying to find a shred of news about them online is a somewhat impossible task. After barely getting started they took a three-year hiatus and shut down their social media in the process, but now the South London art rock project is back once again, this time with Party Album released next month. But how ironic is the name of their new LP?
Consisting of nine disarmingly honest and devastatingly romantic love songs, Party Album is also a gut-wrenching memoir about sobriety and maturity. Out on untitled (recs), the album dives deep into each band member’s individual struggles with the expectations of creativity and the maintenance of a strong sense of purpose.
“We started writing what became the Party Album in January of 2022,” says frontman Jack Merrett. “It began as an open-ended writing session. We finished releasing The Valley in 2021 [and after that] I took a long holiday from social media.”
Across Party Album, Famous – who also feature guitarist JoJo Macari, pianist Alex Wilson, and drummer Lyle Burton – create a sense of clarity amidst the mundanity of everyday life and societal expectations. Tracks such as ‘What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life’, ‘It Goes On Forever’ and ‘The Destroyer’ deal with seemingly universal disruptive and self-deprecating emotions. With each song, the band attempt to transcend these doubts, instilling in the listener a sense of unity, helping them navigate the white waters of life in one’s 20s. Those paying attention are met with a validating feeling that, bizarrely, we’re all in this fucked up thing together.
“For me, I think this album is a bit about a fob of uncertainty punctuated with moments of hysterical realisation; or the ‘epiphany’ of ‘I suddenly know’ which then falls away,” says Jack. Party Album documents a crucial life change for Jack and his position in Famous, he adds.
“[The album] feels like continuing the process of saying what I’ve always wanted to say,” says Jack. “Learning to live with uncertainty and things you can’t control are the big life skills – that’s pretty much a quote from my therapist.” Although the time the band spent working on this project hasn’t necessarily led to complete clarity, it’s at least been a step in the right direction for Jack to accept life’s natural course.
During the recording process, the band had the luxury of flexibility when it came to developing their sound. “We’ve been fortunate in lots of ways, as our label has been very accommodating and have encouraged us to take as much time as we need,” says Jack. Working with producer Scott Knapper, Famous takes listeners back to the England EP of 2019; a riot of frantic new wave synths, witty but anxious spoken word and consciousness-invading chorus lines.
“We developed a fantastic relationship with Scott; he was unbelievably generous with his time,” says Jack. “What began as something we thought we’d finish in a month or so, turned into a much longer recording process of over a year. We got very deep into it and I can’t imagine many bands that would have access to that much time.”
With each Famous record, the production has been nothing short of cinematic. Sculpted by obscure distortion and whimsical synths, on the new album the band doubles down on this whilst weaving in orchestral sensibilities. When discussing the techniques behind their unique sound, Jack blushes, and admits modestly, “Not knowing what I’m doing is a big one.”
“I remember something a very gifted musician and friend told me that has always stuck with me,” he says. “There’s a difference between mucking around – playing with an instrument in the hope something you like will come out – and articulating the idea first and making it happen. In an ideal world, what I try to do is the latter. If you do it that way around, you’ll find that what you have is so much more intentional and personal. We’ve always been interested in how to make digital and organic acoustic sounds fit.”
He adds that being able to get “the messiness and the emotion you get from organic sounds, to gel with the most precise, pristine digital noise,” isn’t an easy process, but is still a trademark of the Famous sound. “If I have any nugget of wisdom that I have learnt in the process, it’s that – and maybe this is obvious – songs that are huge or messy, are usually quite neat and simplistic beneath this.”
During the recording process, Jack was responsible for “conceptualising the universe in which the music operates”. Having spent the last few years working on the overall development and message of Famous, it’s only with Party Album that Jack now feels closer to achieving this goal. “I think it’s a work in progress, but there’s more clarity and purpose now than before,” he says.
In the beginning stages of making the album, Jack admits to wanting to create an “authentic rock record”. While the Party Album is by no means driven by one particular genre or theme, there are clear moments of rock woven throughout the project. Tracks such as ‘Warm Springs,’ and ‘God Hold You’ stick out as guitar-heavy favourites.
Despite all of this however, Jack admits something with a sense of defeat in his voice: “I think there’s a certain way in which I can write. Sometimes I sit down and think, ‘Damn, I want to write a banger’ and I can’t.” Conflicted by the complexities of the music he wishes he could create and what he’s naturally good at making, Jack adds: “There’s a part of me that wants to vibe out and be in The Rolling Stones becauseI love them, but also a part of me that wants to do something harder and more complicated.”
Strangely, the album features a repurposed version of their emotionally captivating release ‘2004’. In the hope of giving the track a new life, Jack admits that “on some levels, it was a practical choice because we kept working on it live and it kept growing”. As a track that’s never left their setlist, in many ways ‘2004’ embodies the Famous philosophy. Growing organically with each passing show, and now changed to fit the meaning of Party Time, which is a different meaning indeed. “Party Album has the quality of being our rehab album – with all of the pretentiousness that might imply,” says Jack. “It’s funny to have a song that in most ways captures the oblivious abandonment that we started with. The song is a throwback to how we were but is now burdened by how complicated life has become since.”
The album finale ‘Love Will Find A Way,’ is a devastatingly romantic call for help. Ending with an interlude from ‘Siegfried Idyll’ by Wagner, Jack boasts that Wagner’s composition, “for me, is the most devastating love song ever written.” ‘Love Will Find A Way,’ was one of the first songs written on the album, and was surprisingly, at one point, imagined as the album opener. Uncertain of where to place it, Jack admits that after a lot of consideration it was considered “too much to be anywhere else on the tracklist, so ended up being pushed to the end”.
