If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past three years, you’ve likely come across a few posts featuring the Gold Coast, Australia-based indie rock sextet and JOVM mainstays FAIRCHILD. Over that period of time, the Australian up-and-comers have released three EPs with singles “Relevance” and “Start Again” landing on Spotify’s Viral 50 and FMQB SubModern Charts in the US. And adding to a national and international profile, the band comprised of siblings Adam Lyons (vocals) and Nathan Lyons (keys), along with Tim Voeten (guitar), Patrick Huerto (guitar), Tommy Davies (bass) and James Alexander (drums) have toured across Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and North America, including showcases during Canadian Music Week and Music Maters Live, and while on tour in the UK they’ve opened for The Human League and MOTHXR.
Now, it’s been about a year since I’ve last written about them and as it turned out, the past year has been rather busy for the band. After spending an intense two year period in Manchester, UK where they focused on performing, touring and finishing their highly-anticipated Catherine Marks-produced full-length debut So Long and Thank You, the band returned to their homeland, where they are set to share the album and the experiences that influenced the material with the world. The album’s latest single, album title track “So Long and Thank You” was written after the death of guitarist Tim Voeten’s father, and reportedly the song is meant to show the septet’s gratitude for all of the people they’ve had in their lives, especially those who have loved, supported and sometimes left them. As the band’s Voeten explains in press notes “‘So Long and Thank You’ was written in different sections, by different members of the band, but with teh same person in mind — my father. When I hear this song, of course I think about my Dad, but I also remember that it helped cement in me my love for making music with these people. During those long nights in the studio, I knew it was okay to not be okay. I’d show up with some half-baked idea and we’d have a few drinks and mess around with it. I never knew one of those half-baked ideas would become ‘So Long and Thank You.’ There isn’t a single sound on this record that can’t simply be put down to enjoying writing music with your friends.”
Of course, the new single will further cement the Australian sextet’s growing reputation for crafting hook-laden, arena rock-friendly synth-rock that possesses a rare and forceful sincerity — and it’s the sort of sincerity that has come from a live full of soaring highs, crushing lows, of love and profound loss, of friendships gained and lost; in fact, for such a relatively young band, the song reveals a swaggering self-assuredness of old vets, who make it seem far easier than it looks.