New Artist of the Week: Phantastic Ferniture

What Dreamy basement-pop trio
Where Australia
Why Julia Jacklin is an Australian singer-songwriter whose 2016 album, Don't Let the Kids Win, won her much critical acclaim – this paper called her "an extraordinary new voice of young folk".

Emboldened by solo success, and with clear ambitions to not just pick one lane, Jacklin has teamed up with her friends Elizabeth Hughes and Ryan K Brennan to become Phantastic Ferniture.

The band, which they describe as a light-hearted project, formed in the basement of a pizza place in Sydney at a birthday party when all 10 of the people who were there agreed to form a band. Only four remembered their promise the next day, and three resolved to actually do it.

With the aim of being less technical and more spontaneous when writing songs, the band eschewed playing their main instruments because “we wanted a low level of expertise, because a lot of good music comes from people whose passion exceeds their skill”.

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Phantastic Ferniture soon no longer felt like a side project. For Jacklin, who had only played slow folk music on stage, it was a necessary creative outlet. “I thought, I would love to know what it’s like to make people feel good and dance,” she says.

It seems to have paid off. The album, comes out on July 27th, and two memorable basement-pop songs have been released so far. Gap Year takes the band's ethos of just getting on with it for the laugh and turns it into a song that doesn't seek validation. The real excitement comes in the form of Fuckin 'n' Rollin, an immediately memorable giddy indie-pop song.

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