It’s 9am in San Francisco and Confidence Man are having some creative differences. “Sugar wants to do a pantomime horse but there’s no way to do that in a hot way,” says frontwoman Janet Planet, talking through her bandmate’s plans to add more chaos to their already furiously fun live shows. She speaks a-mile-a-minute, hair wet from the shower, while her bandmate Sugar Bones lounges on the hotel bed. “People are really anti shooting lasers into the crowd, too. So if there’s some way that they can invent a laser that doesn’t burn out your retinas …”
A Confidence Man show lands somewhere between a school play and a rave. The Australian four-piece have been bubbling under since 2016 when they formed out of the ashes of various indie projects; getting drunk and writing pop tunes turned out to be much more enjoyable. Since then, every raucous festival set has won them new fans: even the most cynical, hardened “real music” nut would struggle not to be charmed by their irresistibly sugary Eurodance, or by Bones swinging Planet – often wearing a Madonna-style cone bra – over his shoulders. One writer accurately described them as “goth Aqua”: for all their slightly vampiric edge, with Bones topless and bleeding on stage at Glastonbury this year, they’re seasoned party-starters out to have fun, and fun is infectious.
On stage, their synchronised dance moves are nerdily seductive, deadpan moves that almost dare you to accuse them of being dodgy. Planet and Bones choreograph the dances for the most part, and are continually trying to one-up themselves. Earlier this year, they even spent hours with one of Beyoncé’s choreographers, learning how to shuffle. “We just couldn’t do it,” says Planet. “So embarrassing. In the end, we were like, thanks, man, but … just leave. I think we took one of his moves and completely destroyed it.”
Behind the two frontpeople are producer Reggie Goodchild and “enigma” Clarence McGuffie, who never appear without their dark beekeeper veils and whose noms de plume were plucked from gravestones. They remain static behind the drums and the decks, happily handing the spotlight to the party-starters up front. Confidence Man’s is a genuine word-of-mouth live success: at Glastonbury, fans turned out in their best cone bras and beekeeper hats in tribute.
Buoyed by the huge success in 2023 of clubland hit Now U Do (made with DJ Seinfeld), the group’s forthcoming third album, 3am (La La La), has the feel of hurtling through the city in an Uber, chasing the party to the next stop. It crackles with the optimism of the hedonistic 90s rave scene and the DayGlo melodies of novelty hits, tempered by the seedy undercurrent of a warehouse party. “There’s a dark world that all the songs live in,” says Bones, inspired by the band’s move to east London and its louche nightlife of dank, sweaty-ceilinged clubs. These “night-time vibes” are underscored by the artwork, which features, among other things, a burning helicopter falling out of the night sky while a badger looks on, smoking a cigarette.
The record was created at the titular hour, the band deeply sozzled in a studio in their newly adopted Dalston home. Says Planet: “I think as a party band, you know, you should probably be partying when you’re writing your music, otherwise …”
Bones finishes the thought: “Otherwise who the fuck are we?”
That energy flashes through 3am (La La La), the antithesis of what Planet calls their “very bright and airy” 2022 album Tilt: her vocals trip girlishly around bouncing synths and echoing four-on-the-floor beats. On a song named Janet, she and Bones trade lines like snatches of conversation from the smoking area, while the anxious orchestral stabs feel like dancing through a crowd looking for your mates. Lead single I Can’t Lose You is a perfect specimen of late summer Eurodance, complete with killer hook, distant explosions and twinkling, twilit breakdown.
As the last slime-green tinge of Brat summer dips over the horizon, Confidence Man are ready to take charge of the autumnal afterparty. There is talk of mysterious robotics making an appearance when they tour the new album in November. “Pretty much the first chance we get, we’ll spend every dollar we have access to,” says Bones. Literally: at one previous show, they wanted to shoot their entire fee over the crowd in cold, hard cash, in tribute to their spiritual godfathers the KLF burning a million quid. “They wouldn’t allow us to do that, sorry,” says Planet.
It’s all in the service of giving their audience a good time. “Over the decade and then some that I’ve known Janet, literally every single party was her just running around physically grabbing people and dragging them on to the dancefloor,” Bones says.
Planet looks delighted as she jumps in: “Now I get to do it for a job!”
