The Oakland band’s wide-ranging debut is a whirlwind of biting critique, nervy post-punk guitars, and absurdist humor. Rarely does a first record speak with such a trenchant voice.
For Fake Fruit, there’s no shortage of things to be pissed off about, so you might as well enjoy the ride. The Oakland, California band’s coltish self-titled debut favors spirited punk primitivism and two-minute art-rock tracks—punchy, melodic songs united by nervy guitars and cutting takedowns of modern frustrations (scene-y social structures, bad sex, the “plight” of men). Miraculously, they manage to avoid self-serious posturing, resulting in an occasionally dissonant, frequently delightful album where fun and fury overlap. Rarely does a band’s first record speak with such a trenchant voice.
Fake Fruit has had time to figure itself out: Chief songwriter and frontperson Hannah “Ham” D’Amato originally founded the band in 2016 in New York, then moved to Vancouver, B.C. and restarted as a trio, before finding new footing in Oakland. There, she secured a semi-finalized lineup—lead guitarist Alex Post, drummer Miles MacDiarmid, and a rotating cast of bassists—as well as a few side gigs: deejaying Chicano soul and oldies at events hosted by psych-rock eclecticist Sonny Smith of Sonny and the Sunsets and once playing in a Suburban Lawns cover band called Gidget Goes to Hell. By mid-2019, D’Amato, Post, and MacDiarmid had saved up enough to turn a tour tape into their debut LP, tracking the instrumentals in just two days. Now, two years later, Fake Fruit finally arrives via Smith’s label Rocks in Your Head. It’s well worth the wait: In the half-decade since its first iteration, the band has evolved from nomadic experimentation into nascent punk prowess.
From the get, Fake Fruit is electrifying. Rhythmic, garage-y riffs ignite “No Mutuals,” propelled by the song’s dissatisfaction with online social etiquette. At its center is Fake Fruit’s most distinctive asset: D’Amato’s voice, which hits like Courtney Barnett fronting a punk band. “I don’t wanna wait to be christened as cool,” she sings, blowing up the pronunciation of “cool” until it fractures, sounding almost like “cruel.” The final word in “You look like a fool” receives a similar distortion—an eviscerating affectation.
From there, Fake Fruit chase whatever seems to interest them: math-y staccato and frustrated sprechgesang (“Miscommunication”), spiky vibrato (“No Space for Residence”), untidy tempos (“Stroke My Ego”), even an echo of indie pop as D’Amato harmonizes with Post on “Swing and a Miss.” Tonally, “Swing and a Miss” stings of sentimentality, but a closer listen flips the meaning: D’Amato is singing about a partner who couldn’t please her (“It was a swing and a miss/That’s alright/You didn’t make me cum/It wasn’t enough”), and cheekily enough, this song follows another titled “Stroke My Ego.” There’s more absurdity here than it may first appear, a reminder of the humor to be found in the throes of irritation and even of pain. It surfaces in the anxious, acerbic rock of “Yolk,” where D’Amato bellows, “I’m with my honey/He says I’m funny/I had a bad day/His yolk is running,” and on the skronking closer “Milkman,” which opens with a deliciously sour tribute to the list-making mundanity of post-punk: “Hot sidewalk/No shade/Milk curdles/With age.” This band is just a little too impatient to watch paint dry, so milk curdling it is.
What imperfections do appear lie in the album’s pacing: a whirlwind of biting aphorism and gloomy post-punk in one corner; asymmetrical, snapping guitars in another; one song that leverages frustration at self-victimization (“Don’t Put It on Me”) and another where D’Amato riffs on male entitlement (“Lying Legal Horror Lawyers,” featuring the line, “Let’s talk about men’s rights/Let’s talk about their plight/Nah! They’ll be alright”). The amount of movement can be overwhelming, but that’s the point: Whatever the topic, whatever the sound, Fake Fruit is both annoyed and engrossed, teetering between having a great time and trying to hold a conversation with someone who isn’t worth the effort. It’s an urgent, emphatic kind of chaos, where life is a series of discontents, each one worthy of a catchy song.
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