Fake Fruit

Fake Fruit — The Oakland, CA-based post-punk band featuring Hannah “Ham” D’Amato, Alex Post, & Miles MacDiarmid — announce their new album Mucho Mistrust, out August 23rd via Carpark Records, and release their lead single/video, “Mucho Mistrust.” Though Mucho Mistrust – recorded live at the Bay Area’s Atomic Garden studio with producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Home Is Where) –  is a sly reference to a beloved Blondie lyric, the title encapsulates both the anxieties of daily life, a bloodless music industry, and global capitalism as well as the clear-eyed skepticism needed to rebel against it. Across 12 propulsively unpredictable tracks, the album is both their most collaborative and most immediate yet.

“Mucho Mistrust,” the explosive lead single, is simultaneously disorienting and direct, with clanging guitars from Post, off-kilter drums from MacDiarmid, and D’Amato snarling, “How you gonna blame me / when you could’ve done something about it / it’s not right / How you gonna marinate me / in shitty things overnight.” The song was written during a turbulent and transformational period for Ham, and this personal upheaval was channeled into the track. “There were big life changes and I was so close to boiling over,” says D’Amato. “I left a bad relationship, entered a more stable and loving one, got diagnosed with alopecia, and I’m turning 30 soon too. This song was a snapshot of how I got through a difficult year.” The video, directed and edited by Jimmy Whispers, is a tongue-in-cheek parody of televangelism, featuring MacDiarmid as a TV pastor in devil makeup and D’Amato as a guardian Angel to an older woman (played by her own grandmother).

Fake Fruit originally started as the nomadic songwriting project of California native Hannah “Ham” D’Amato, who spent time living and performing in New York City and Vancouver, but it’s been a full-fledged band for half a decade. After she moved to the Bay Area in 2018, she enlisted guitarist Alex Post and drummer Miles MacDiarmid along with a rotating cast of bassists to flesh out her songs.

Where the debut was a collection of songs D’Amato wrote in different places with different lineups, the band’s latest effort Mucho Mistrust – its first for Carpark Records –  is a reflection of a collaborative and democratic unit. “Through all of our extensive touring with so many bands we look up to, we have grown so much as musicians and people,” says D’Amato. “There’s a lot more confidence and direction for how we write. I had always wanted to write more collaboratively. What does Fake Fruit sound like? How do we all write together? We do it so easily. It’s incredible.”

Listening to Mucho Mistrust, the propulsive energy of these songs stretches the limits of indie rock and is a reflection of the band’s voracious and eclectic tastes.”Everyone in the band brings a wide range of musical influences to the table,” says D’Amato. “Alex and I both DJ (sometimes together) around town. If you listen hard enough to the record, you can pick up on influences spanning across many genres and even a tongue-in-cheek nod to The Cars in ‘Psycho.’”

For the band, these themes are personal. “I’m managing us while I’m in between changing diapers in my day job as a nanny,” says D’Amato. “Everyone in the band still believes in it and is motivated to keep wading through the bullshit.” On this album, they had no choice but to bet on themselves and each other.

As adventurous and righteous as Mucho Mistrust gets, there’s still an inviting core that never takes itself too seriously. From the ripping “Cause of Death,” which self-deprecatingly takes aim at anxiety and indecision, to the searing title track, Fake Fruit imbue their songs with humor and heart. “Our band is fun,” says D’Amato. “My number one coping mechanism for all of life is to joke about it. Even when the album talks about serious things, I am proud of how funny it can be.”