Interview – Getting to know FVNERAL
Eora/Sydney-based indie-rock band FVNERAL have just released their debut EP, WHEN I GET SOBER. We asked them to tell us about themselves:
We are… FVNERAL, a collective of friends turned chosen family. We’re a group of multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, vocalists, producers, photographers, content creators and writers coming together over our shared love of music and art, and a really deep respect and care for one another. It’s hard to summarise exactly how all of these relationships have evolved over the years, but somehow, we’ve all ended up here, working through the best/worst/scariest/saddest/silliest things life has to offer together.
WHEN I GET SOBER is… our debut EP, which we are so excited to be sharing with the world. It’s ultimately a collection of songs about self-discovery and growth. The various songs are meditations on grief and loss (‘EVER KNOWN’), falling in love (‘CALIFORNIA STREET’), mental illness and the power of supportive relationships (‘GOD DAMN LEDs’), moving beyond the gender binary and celebrating your true self (‘GOODB(i)YE’), and the consequences of substance abuse (‘SOBER’). The through-line of WHEN I GET SOBER is really about addiction to something or someone, and a vow to be better. It’s a body of work that encapsulates the ethos of FVNERAL and feels like the perfect culmination of the pieces we’ve been putting out over the last 12 months.
Home is… something that looks quite different for each of us. Across the group we have a real range of relationships to place and family, which I think are at the core of what defines ‘home’ for most people. We’ve come from and created homes in such diverse places – from regional NSW to the busy hubs of southeast Asia, and from small English villages to the coast of California. As well as that, we’ve each had different experiences of family and relationship structures, both growing up and in what we envision for our futures. I think there’s strength in recognising and celebrating how such varied constructions of ‘home’ make each of us who we are, and for that to be reflected in how FVNERAL functions and what we create. While we each might have experienced times where it didn’t feel like this, I think now we recognise that home is where we make it, where our community is, where we feel loved and supported. Our hope is that this FVNERAL bubble can continue to be a home for us all, and for anyone else who wants to come along for the ride.
We spend too much time… debating where to get dinner, inevitably choosing Golden Lotus (again), driving to and from Newtown, and trying to find a parking spot on King Street to pick up our precious laksa. This happens maybe 80% of the time we have band meetings or practice, and it really kills our productivity. But alas, we repeat the vicious cycle because the laksa is just too good. @goldenlotus hook us up with an endorsement pls!!
We’d never… played a show together as FVNERAL before! We’ve been in a few different projects together in the past, but our EP release show at The Vanguard on October 22nd was FVNERAL’s official live debut. This show was in the works for a long time, and we worked hard to make it a really special and memorable first show. Some of our besties, Bellamy and Finding Better Health joined us to support.
It might surprise people to learn that… Ally and I (Tim) have actually known each other since we were 13 and 14 at school together – babies! We really did live pretty polar opposite lives as teenagers in almost every way imaginable and only ended up becoming friends after we’d finished high school, but there was clearly some kind of mutual fandom that grew out of seeing each other perform at assemblies, presentation nights and other suitably terrifying school events. Honestly, the real surprise embedded in all of this (and something that I am almost maniacally invested in shedding light on) is that although neither of us really had many real-world fans/friends in high-school, Ally had this genuinely viral YouTube channel, spurred on by none other than One Direction’s own Liam Payne, who literally called her “babe”!!!!!!!!
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Keep up to date with FVNERAL on Insta and Twitter.
