Freo Band Paint’s Five Tips For Surviving A Quarter Life Crisis

Navigating your twenties can feel like you’re stuck in a perpetual state of second-guessing every decision—career choices, relationships, and even what to eat for dinner. Fremantle-based alt-rock band Paint knows this all too well.

Their sophomore EP, Gift Shop, delves into the chaos and humour of growing pains, offering tracks that range from dreamy and nostalgic to raw and self-reflective. Written in a Margaret River farmhouse and recorded at home, the EP captures the relatable struggles of ignored warning signs, lingering thoughts, and the absurdity of adulthood.

Inspired by coming-of-age films and the DIY ethos, Paint’s four members—Anya, Liam, Tom, and Jack—blend their signature shoegaze and slacker rock sound with playful introspection, creating a perfect soundtrack for the quarter-life crisis. But surviving this phase of life takes more than a great playlist, so we’ve teamed up with Paint to share their five tongue-in-cheek tips for making it through your twenties.

Spoiler: it involves Creed, the Coen Brothers’ films, and a touch of existentialism.

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Without further ado, here are Paint’s prescriptions:

1. Get your mind off the complicated quarter-life crisis by planning for the extremely straightforward midlife crisis. All you need for that one is enough money for a jetski, Lambo and a few guitars you won’t play, which is actually a lot of money, so start out by enrolling in Uni for something like finance and go from there.

2. Sit in your garage, listen to Creed, throw a tennis ball against the wall, and drink some beers. Set a timer for 5 hours, and don’t get up unless it’s to get another beer or to rewind the song to a good part. After that amount of time, you should have a pretty good grip on everything. Since you’ve already got the scares, a hangover isn’t going to rattle you that much either, so sit in there all night if you have to.

3. Go down some simulation theory internet rabbit holes to the point where you start to believe in it. The fact that we probably exist in an extremely powerful computer program directed by an entity outside of our physical comprehension should help to calm you down. Just don’t get carried away and start acting like you’re in GTA if you aren’t. 

4. Watch the Cohen Brothers’ 1996 crime classic Fargo, and put your crisis into perspective. You might think you’ve got problems, but at least you don’t have that guy’s problems. Also, in the movie, when Carl calls Jerry and says, “30 minutes and we'll wrap this thing up,” there are exactly 30 minutes left in the movie. That’s some good trivia for you to tell to whoever you watch it with.

5. Talk to your parents about what they were doing and what they’d achieved at your age, then compare yourself to them. Just kidding, don’t do that.

Gift Shop is out now on all major streaming platforms.