The lore around the creation of Confidence Man's third album begins at an unassuming east London café. As the Australianborn, London-based duo - Janet Planet and Sugar Bones explain, their days would begin at Café Cecilia on the banks of Regent's Canal, where they would load up on steak and cocktails, before decamping back to their Hackney studio and working until after sunrise.
It's fitting, then, that Rolling Stone UK meet the duo at that very spot for lunch, as they explain how they decided to make their supreme new album, full of songs about partying and getting messy, by doing, well, just that.
"We realised that we could write way better songs when we were drunk," Janet smiles.
Her sidekick Sugar adds, "We'd been doing that for years just for fun. We'd be partying at home, drunk, and get out the laptop and make a song. But this time we realised that we could actually do it and it actually be good. Go straight to the source!"
On these infamous nights at the studio, the band would return from Cecilia with bottles of wine from the off-licence, get cracking in the evening with their bandmate and producer Reggie Goodchild, and often keep hammering away until nine or 10 in the morning. Over time, they realised that the best ideas started to arrive at around three in the morning.
This process is immortalised on 3AM (LA LA LA), a supremely fun dance-pop album about partying, written while partying, and to be absorbed while partying. It's an ecstatic record that solidifies Confidence Man as the premier party starters of this new era of music.
IT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to believe in their current guise, but Confidence Man began when Janet was holding down an office job, and Sugar was working in bushland regeneration, describing himself as a country music lover who "just wanted to sit on my deck and strum the banjo all day".
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Denne historien er fra October/November 2024-utgaven av Rolling Stone UK.
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The Scream Queen Next Door - In just a few short years, Hunter Schafer has gone from small-town North Carolina to global runways, Euphoria stardom, and her first lead role, in the horror flick Cuckoo
Hunter Schafer greets me with a confession. Beckoning me through a small gated fence into the winding maze of Chateau Marmont's lush, greenery-covered courtyard, she gives me a hug, then yawns. There's a lot happening right now, she says. I've barely gotten a handle on it. There's a grey vape in her hand, worn split-toe Tabis on her feet, and a wry smile on her face. To be fully honest with you, I'd forgotten this was happening.
Together in Electronic Dreams - Raphaella Lima of video game publisher Electronic Arts brings music to her childhood love of gaming to spotlight many of the most exciting emerging acts of the past two decades in the hit football game EA SPORTS FC
Raphaella Lima of video game publisher Electronic Arts brings music to her childhood love of gaming to spotlight many of the most exciting emerging acts of the past two decades in the hit football game EA SPORTS FC. ME AND A$AP just clicked, says Raphaella Lima, global music marketing director at video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA). I met him when I was just coming off maternity leave, so I wasn't drinking, and he'd been in the dentist's chair all day, so he wasn't drinking either. But we sat in the hotel, and he thought, 'You know what? I f**k with this girl! Let's go to the studio.' So, my partner and I went, we heard his music, and we thought, 'This guy is incredible.
The Mix - String Theory - On new album Odyssey, Nubya Garcia conducts sweeping strings over her innovative saxophone playing to mark herself out as a unique star of the UK jazz world
There are clichéd 'difficult second albums', and then there are those where you start almost from scratch. The difficulty with jazz prodigy Nubya Garcia's second LP, Odyssey, came when she decided that this new batch of songs she had written needed the sweeping majesty of a string section, before deciding to learn how to write and conduct it all herself.
Daydream Believer - Welsh techno-pop artist Kelly Lee Owens is the first signing to Dirty Hit's new dance label, dh2. She talks
Welsh techno-pop artist Kelly Lee Owens is the first signing to Dirty Hit's new dance label, dh2. She talks "transcending my bullshit" on the euphoric, thumping club tunes of fourth album, Dreamstate. While writing the new album, Owens was determined to make the art that my soul wants to make, ignoring outside influences and following a path and an energy that felt like it was coming to her from a higher place. "I always hoped that I'd find a home in a label that would carry that vision through," she says. When she met Daniel in Los Angeles, she asked him, "Do you care about the long term? How much time are you willing to invest in this project? What do you see?"
Sounding the Alert - The UK music industry is calling for the new Labour government to make essential changes to rescue British music - from halting the closure of venues to providing essential opportunities for new talent
To quote one Bob Dylan: "the times they are a-changin." After 14 years of Tory rule, 4 July saw a changing of the guard in British politics as Sir Keir Starmer stood on the steps of Downing Street to mark the start of a new Labour government and - according to the man himself - a decade of national renewal.Not that the result was ever in doubt, however. A cursory look at polls over the preceding year showed that a Labour landslide was very much on the cards, and it seemed like those aforementioned Dylan lyrics were about to ring true.
Staying Power- As they gave their first performance in the UK for five years, Rolling Stone UK caught up with Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, HAN, Felix, Seungmin and I.N, who together make up the record-breaking K-pop phenomenon Stray Kids
As they gave their first performance in the UK for five years, Rolling Stone UK caught up with Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, HAN, Felix, Seungmin and I.N, who together make up the record-breaking K-pop phenomenon Stray Kids. Here, they open up about the bonds they share between themselves and their devoted fans, as well as their common goal of super stardom
BACK TO THE GRIND
The Clipse broke up when a spiritual path called to one of the brothers from Virginia. Now, one of the greatest duos in rap returns
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Nine years after his decade-defining debut album In Colour, Jamie xx returns with In Waves, a darker and broodier follow-up that saw him fall back in love with making music
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IN COMPLETE CONFIDENCE
Confidence Man's Janet Planet and Sugar Bones go bigger and wilder than ever before on 3AM (LA LA LA), an album made about partying, while partying, and perfect for partying to
