Q&A: Fake Fruit Laughs Through Despair on New Album ‘Mucho Mistrust’
TWO WEEKS AGO, FAKE FRUIT RELEASED THEIR NEWEST RECORD — Mucho Mistrust, and are about a month away from debuting these songs live on tour. It’s shaping up to be a great year for the band, Hannah D’Amato, Alex Post, and Miles MacDiarmid - They’re riding high on their spunky new album, they are newly signed to Carpark Records, and have a tour on their heels. Ironically, these are all things that have disaffected D’Amato at one point or another. She loves the music, hates the business.
“You feel like it’s a cat and mouse game,” D’Amato tells me over a call. “How could you ever win?”
Mucho Mistrust isn’t coy about any of it. It’s an album about a hard year; When writing the songs that made it to the record, D’Amato dealt with breakups and the struggles that come with getting older. Being an artist in the industry doesn’t make things easier. Sometimes, it can all feel one in the same. The songs are so universal in theme that they blur the intended subject - take lines like “Who taught you to behave this way? / If she could see you, what would mama say?” from burning album opener “See It That Way” or “There’s two sides to each goddamned story / Whoever tells their’s first is the one that gets the glory” from “Más O Menos.”
Coming off of their self-titled debut album, their new songs are more feverish and intricate. Some feel like an immediate gut punch (“Venetian Blinds,” “Más O Menos”), others feel close to tears (“Ponies,” “Sap”). Yet, the record has fun through its anxieties and bitter call-outs. It’s how D’Amato copes: Scream, laugh, cry.
Fresh off their tour with Omni back in August, D’Amato sat down with Luna to discuss how being silly helps the band cope with the toils of everyday life. Read our interview below.
LUNA: We talked before Noise Pop last year, and you guys were already performing some of the new songs live, so it’s been a really long time.
D’AMATO: Yeah, we’ve been touring. I think that’s why this record is so much better than the first one, because we did get to road test the songs. When we listened back to the first record, most of those songs had just been finished, or at least the ones we wrote as a band. Through playing them live, we realized we play way faster and they sound completely different.
These ones got all road tested and stuff. I think it’s as close to a live record as it could possibly be. We were tracking everything at the same time, including vocals. There’s really minimal overdubs. It’s cool to be like, this is what the record sounds like and this is also what it’ll sound like when you go and see us play.
LUNA: The stuff that you talk about in the songs that are on the new record… Are those topics still close to you since they were written so long ago?
D’AMATO: I feel like they’re still close to me from an archival standpoint… Even though I’m in a way different place in my life, when I listen to that song or when I perform it, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s what that felt like and that sucked,” or whatever. Luckily, I’m not in the same place I was when we were writing those songs… I can feel a little bashful about, like, there’s a big breakup song coming out and I have so moved on and I’m married and things couldn’t be more different for me. But you know, you still have to keep on singing the really snarly song, but it still feels good. I can channel other emotions into it, or be like my friends go through this shit too.
LUNA: It must be nice doing those live knowing that you’re past a lot of those things.
D’AMATO: Yeah, then it becomes more theatrical… There’s something about having that safety of a really loving relationship behind me, probably for the first time in my life, where I can really go for it and I don’t have to worry about embarrassing myself or being over the top. I can just really fucking perform and stand in the song and be really present, and not worry about, you know, is anybody going to want to date me if I’m just signing about hating men or whatever. Laughs.
LUNA: You guys recently signed to Carpark Records. How did that come together?
D’AMATO: Somebody that we had been working with on the first album campaign shared the record with Carpark… The first phone call that I had with Todd, the label head, he was like, “I’ve been listening to it for a month.” They’re really concise and careful with how they go about signing, which I really appreciate. Their roster kind of speaks to that… it’s really well rounded across all kinds of genres. There’s a lot of Bay Area love on Carpark, which is cool, Space Moth and Madeline Kenny… The whole team is super supportive and sweet. Just the best people that could possibly be in their position.
It's funny to go in charging with the themes of the record and even the album artwork, the fat cat and the tiny mouse, it’s very obvious what I’m going for. It was funny sending over the album artwork and having the label head be like, “That is one fat cat, ha-ha,” and then also be like, I trust you guys and I don’t see you guys that way. It’s a larger industry thing. You feel like it’s a cat-and-mouse game and you’re like, how could I ever win?
LUNA: How are your thoughts on the music industry now, as opposed to when you were writing it? Do you feel the same?
D’AMATO: I feel the same if not worse.
LUNA: Oh God. Laughs
D’AMATO: I just feel like, as time goes on and Live Nation and Goldenvoice are making the one area of a musician’s livelihood, which is touring… wringing that out even more makes it feel so much harder to feel optimistic about it.
Every single corner of the labyrinth where you could possibly make money as a musician, somebody skims off the top. There’s nothing that belongs to just the artist.
LUNA: How do you deal with all of those things while being a band and still touring? Is it hard to manage all of that?
D’AMATO: Yeah, it is. But I’ll say, we’re lucky to have the same core group of people who’ve been fighting for this still intact. It really helps to be like, this is really freaking hard, we’re putting a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in, and then looking to your left and right and being like, okay, they’re also doing it. I’m not alone in this. There’s no point [where] I’ve ever been like, it’s on me. All the workload gets distributed pretty well and everybody brings different talents and all kinds of stuff to the table. It does feel like there’s a community in it too.
LUNA: I wanna hear about some of the tracks specifically. Of course, “Mucho Mistrust” and “Cause of Death” are the singles, but I’m really interested in “Mas o Menos.” Have you played that one live before?
D’AMATO: Yeah, definitely. That’s one where I don’t play guitar on it. I just… *makes screaming noise*
LUNA: That must be so nice to do that live!
D’AMATO: It’s cathartic as hell. There’s this girl who’s on the label. Her artist name is Naomi Alligator, but her name’s Corrinne. She’s also an animator in addition to being a musician, but she did a really cool animation for the video. I had come up with this idea… a flower growing through the concrete, getting stepped on and still growing back up again. She just ran with that and made a really funny and cool animation. That song is super fun and very obviously like a straight-on breakup song.
LUNA: And “Long Island Iced Tea,” that might be one of my favorite songs on the album.
D’AMATO: Yeah, I’m really partial to that one as well. This thing was floating around in my head when I was in this transition between trying to leave a partner and having to move out and deal with all of that life stuff where you’re so entangled. There was a billion emotions buzzing around in my head at once, which is like “my mind is long island iced tea.” Then “your mind is sunken [sic] cost fallacy,” I knew that we were in such opposite places of me wanting to get the hell out of there, and then that ex probably being like, “but we put so much time into this!” You know, sunken cost fallacy, doesn’t mean it’s going to work.
LUNA: I think all of these songs are still really fun even if it’s about a breakup or being pessimistic about the music industry… I also love the music videos you guys have been putting out. The clown one is really fun.
D’AMATO: Yeah, that was awesome. We’re always talking in sketches and stuff. We’re really goofy. It was cool to get to have all these tiny vignettes of dumb ideas all strung together. We got to do probably five or six gags. I had a squirt pen and tiny Rubik’s cubes… That director, Alex [Ajayi], who’s based in the Bay, he’s so fucking good at what he does. The whole crew that he brought… We did not have the budget for them, but they were putting their whole hearts into it. So sweet.
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