Fake Fruit is Finally Home, Discussing Their Upcoming Record and Noise Pop Festival
WHEN I SAT DOWN WITH THREE OUT OF THE FOUR MEMBERS OF — Fake Fruit, Hannah D'Amato, Alex Post, and Dylan Allard, they tell me that they finished tracking for their second record two days prior to our interview.
“We were listening back to one of the songs,” D’Amato says. “Our friend Jeanne had just added sax, and all the harmonies were in place and I just couldn’t stop crying. I was just high in my bed humming this song to myself and now it’s this massive cinematic-sounding thing. I was just really moved.”
Their second record is, as D’Amato puts it, “so much better” than the first. Their debut album, Fake Fruit, came out in the spring of 2021 via Rocks in Your Head Records. The band then consisted of D’Amato, Post, their drummer Miles MacDiarmid, and a rotating cast of bassists before eventually settling with Allard.
It’s exciting to imagine a new era of Fake Fruit that beats out the first record, a project so exuberant and self-assured. The witty surrealism of the album is mirrored in their band name itself, the irony of fake fruit (shiny, hollow, inedible) present in their musings of “the absurdity of modern life.” What is and isn’t palatable seems to thread each track together, both in obvious and obscure ways. Some directly reference runny yolks and curdled milk in a Dry Cleaning–like posture. Others are short-handed but nonetheless quick-witted: “My dog speaks more than you did tonight,” from “Keep You,” or “I’m the patron saint / of time-wastin’” from “Don’t Put It on Me.” Tangy, angular riffs follow each track, both the explosive (“No Mutuals,” “Lying Legal Horror Lawyers”) and the slow-burns (“Swing and a Miss,” “Stroke My Ego”). D’Amato’s vocals soar in delighting her minute-thirty manifestos, reaching highs and lows that are yelling, chanting, and thoughtfully reflecting.
Fake Fruit is a product of all the lives D’Amato lived before settling in Oakland. Born in Los Angeles and growing up in Orange County, she moved to Brooklyn, NY and formed the first iteration of Fake Fruit as a two-piece. The band transformed into a trio once D’Amato moved to Vancouver, and when eventually planting roots in Oakland two years later, began to blossom. D’Amato wrote almost every song alone before later members joined the effort and embellished the tracks in recording.
When I asked the band how they see Fake Fruit as they lean more into their second record, D’Amato remembers being shocked that it performed as well as it did.
“I was just like, ‘Please God let us sell the 250 copies that Sonny printed,’” she says, referencing Sonny Smith of Rocks In Your Head Records. “Then he got a pressing of 500, then a pressing of 1,000. It’s freaking insane. I’m really amazed at everything that we’ve gotten to do and feeling super thankful.”
Allard adds, “I think part of the reason they were worried about selling 250 copies in the first place was that there was a global pandemic happening — still happening. Everybody in the world of music suddenly was like, ‘Hey, I know you felt like you were just screaming mindlessly in the void before, but now you really are. There’s no shows, there’s no anything, there’s no festivals. You can have someone on the internet talk about it if you’re lucky, but the fact that it got a lot of traction was really cool. Feels like against impossible odds.”
After five years of playing together, the band now has a stable footing to try new things on their second record. Despite their clear post-punk lineage, their musical interests go beyond just guitar music, which will shine through in their new songs.
“There’s more chemistry between the four of us,” Post explains. “I think on the first record we felt a little more beholden to a narrower sound, like we need to sound like a certain kind of band. [The second record] is like, how can we push the limits of what is a Fake Fruit song?”
Many of the new songs are on the setlist for their upcoming headlining show for Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop this Thursday, accompanied by Ian Sweet and Bay area neighbors Juicebumps and The Band Ice Cream. After having to cancel their 2020 Noise Pop Festival appearance with Necking and Pardoner due to the pandemic, this will be the band’s debut at the event.
I asked the band what they like about being a Bay area band. “I like the stability,” D’Amato says. “I mean, I probably wasn’t ever going to be able to plant roots in Vancouver… The thing I like about living in the Bay the most is the permanence of the lineup and how the band stopped being so temporary.”
Post adds, “I love that there’s so many amazing new projects coming out of Oakland and SF as well. There’s an overarching scene, but it’s not beholden to one genre. There’s always music happening almost any given night of the week. I think because a lot of Bay Area stuff is a little overlooked at the moment it gives people who live here a little bit more energy to really support… We need to support these bands because no one else is doing it, and they deserve it.”
Tickets to Fake Fruit w/ Ian Sweet, Juicebumps, and The Band Ice Cream are available now.
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