Famous’ new single “Nice While It Lasted” is the sound of a band on collision course with itself

Released through untitled (recs) (Jerskin Fendrix, deathcrash, Brad Stank), “Nice While It Lasted” is the sound of a band spiralling off-road in a frantic, fidgety and furious drive into darkness, with the resulting racket echoing how lead singer Jack Merrett has previously described the band’s ideal sound: “sad but fast”.

The song slaloms across sonic lanes, rushing through the gears with its Krautrock-built engine; swerving between braggadocio surf rock riffs, heavy metal inspired solo-tapping and clanging industrial rock drums, all steered by the hubris of a driver whose destination is wherever the car gets totalled.

For the track’s emotive vocals, Merrett appears possessed by the foggy protagonist dubbed “The King of the Dark” - his own Mr. Mojo Risin. The initially catatonic vocals blossom into anxious screeches in line with the track’s insidious urgency, with the equal parts manic, equal parts melancholic mantra “please try not to die” uttered beneath the cascade of whooshing noise to varying levels of conviction.

Merrett is cryptically taciturn when describing the energies that propel the turbulent track, simply acknowledging that "’Nice While It Lasted’ was recorded in London between March and June 2020. It’s a song about losing my way.”

Like David Bowie swivelled and skidded around a West Berlin car park in a drunken stupor during the nadir of his personal life and recorded the supremely melancholic banger “Always Crashing in the Same Car”, Famous has channeled their own profound nocturnal auto-erotic neurosis in a triumphant return that feels like it's on course to crash into big things.