What happens when optimism starts sounding dangerous? Full Flower Moon Band answer with Endless Summer, their new single. Heavy psych-rock guitars, a circling riff and a chorus built on impossible confidence push the track forward, while its sunny title slowly curdles into something stranger. The brighter it gets, the less reassuring it feels.
The Brisbane five-piece is led by songwriter, guitarist and frontwoman Kate “Babyshakes” Dillon, who defines Endless Summer as “the voice of a manic episode”, summed up in the idea that you can keep the season going whenever the sun appears. Elsewhere, the lyrics insist that nothing can slow you down, that everything remains within reach and even that heaven is betting on you. Taken together, those lines begin to sound less reassuring than compulsive, as confidence tips into something harder to control and optimism starts feeding its own momentum.
That intensity fits a project that has always treated performance as something larger than everyday life. Full Flower Moon Band began in Dillon’s bedroom before expanding into a five-piece armed with triple guitars, sludgy riffs, deadpan humour and a frontwoman who readily admits she becomes somebody else onstage. “Well baby, it’s a show. Let’s go,” she says, a philosophy that neatly captures the theatrical confidence and controlled chaos running through the band’s world.
The release also arrives with a music video, extending that sense of heightened reality beyond the song itself. The band’s forthcoming album, After Dark, was written during Dillon’s month in New York on the Grant McLennan Fellowship, a period of isolation, intense writing and unfamiliar surroundings. With Megaflower having topped the ARIA Australian Albums Chart and stadium support slots for Foo Fighters ahead, the scale around Full Flower Moon Band keeps growing, but the most compelling part remains the volatility at its centre.
