For Brisbane rockers Full Flower Moon Band, 2025 has proved to be a cavalcade of highs followed by more highs, mostly revolving around their acclaimed third album Megaflower which came out midway through the year.

The ambitious record debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Albums Chart, sold out of its first vinyl pressing in a week, racked up strong reviews – as well as gaining solid radio airplay all over the planet – ultimately earning them a legion of new fans (including some of the high-profile variety). 

European tours, festival slots, sold out headlining jaunts – Megaflower opened a lot of doors, and Full Flower Moon Band marched defiantly through all of them.

Now, instead of resting on their laurels, the band are doubling down with the release of Megaflower Deluxe, a 2-LP version of the album featuring a treasure trove of offcuts, collaborations and tracks birthed in the record’s immediate aftermath hence existing thematically in the same realms (with the bonus disc available as a standalone purchase for those already in possession of the original Megaflower).

For Full Flower Moon Band frontwoman and chief songwriter Kate “Babyshakes Dillon” Herrington it’s all about expanding the Megaflower universe and adding value to what’s gone before, rather than trying to make a quick buck from the success that few – even the band themselves – envisioned happening so quickly.

“I definitely didn't see it coming,” the singer grins. “It's funny to look back at how tentative I was about how the album would do and then to just be blown away by it – I was as surprised as anybody. Not that we didn't work incredibly hard and have our eyes on the sort of year that we had, but it was really satisfying to actually see it come to life.”

After years building organically on the Brisbane scene, Full Flower Moon Band made massive headway on a national level with their second album Diesel Forever (2022), which found them transcending their original ‘70s influences and finding their own distinctive voice.

While that album was virtually recorded live on the floor, for Megaflower – which was produced by Herrington, alongside Tony Buchen, Ali Richardson, and her bandmates – they decided to take more time and strive to utilise the actual studio for their own benefit, augmenting rather than just capturing their epic live aesthetic.

“I think it's pretty natural, at least for me, to swing to the opposite way with every album,” Herrington reflects. “Almost as a way to repent for my sins on the last album, I'll sort of naturally swing to a different approach on the next one. 

“So Diesel Forever being live, for everything that worked with that there was so much I was frustrated with – I couldn't edit very easily because there was no click, I could do rudimentary overdubs but everything was a bit tougher because it was not on a grid – so I just swung the other direction. 

“I was, like, 'I want to be able to multitrack the hell out of this thing! I want it all gridded!’ I wanted it all, the ability to be able to just keep stacking ideas and taking them away. So it was just a natural progression to look at more of a studio and multitracking energy for it. 

"And some of these have been songs that I'd struggled to record in the past, so I guess taking a different direction with them was natural. There was a lot of songs on there that hadn't fit into other albums before, so I wanted the malleability of being able to say, ‘I've got a hard drive and it's got my whole album on it and I can take it to any studio and any producer and any mixing engineer and it's good’.” 

Even with this additional time and opportunity to focus while recording Megaflower, Herrington isn’t really sure that she got any closer to capturing each song as she originally envisioned them in her head.

“There’s still an asterisk beside each one,” she laughs. “I think it's funny with songwriting as a metaphor for recording: I often think that a new song forming in my head seems to have 20 pages of lyrics and I have to distill them down in order to find the perfect ideas, and then I sit down and I actually write out every single lyric I have and it end up being not that long at all. And I realised that in my mind, it just felt like a universe because they were so exciting and big to me. 

“And I think the same thing with the recorded material – I could say that I had a really clear idea of exactly what it was going to sound like, but the more and more you put the building blocks in place, the more you realise that you're actually learning more about the song as you progress with the recording and the song is blooming. It just felt really big and finished in that little spark in your mind.” 

Though Megaflower might look from the outside like it came together over a two-year period, much of this time was spent on the road and the actual recording process transpired over a matter of months.

“To me, it felt fast in comparison to how I'd worked in the past, because we'd never had anyone waiting on an album before,” Herrington continues. “Like, Diesel Forever was made in a vacuum of attention – no one really was waiting on a record – whereas this one was made with a lot of people waiting for it to land. It felt like that impacted the process as well, in that I didn't have two years to potter around. 

“But I tell myself regularly that every idea you put in or you take out of the record, it all impacts the final sound. It feels like every decision I make – every doubt or confidence – it still makes it on the record, like a part of the journey. 

“I just have to remind myself that you kind of start a record at the pondering phase and everything that happens in between then and the finished thing is the recorded album. I think I'd go mad not acknowledging that circumstance plays a part in how a record sounds.”

The bonus disc of Megaflower Deluxe is of a higher calibre than just a slew of songs that didn’t make the cut, featuring three strong new collaborations – Scene (with Brooklyn art-punks Gustaf), Harder Man (with Nick Allbrook of Pond fame) and Smoking (with Melbourne garage punks Drunk Mums) – as well as a clutch of unreleased tracks and a gorgeous live rendition of Megaflower closer Kiss Him Goodbye.

“Most of them were in my kit before Megaflower started,” Herrington muses. “Everything existed and could have been on Megaflower except for Scene – and Scene Reprise, obviously they're connected – Wingman and Female Mechanic. So those four were sort of birthed coming out of the Megaflower experience and represent me wanting to add things that I thought were missing. 

“Harder Man was truly attempted for Megaflower and I just didn't think I could sing it – I felt like I needed someone else, but I didn't have the collab brain at that point. Smoking was written during Megaflower, 100% – I remember just feeling so cheeky showing it to the band and being, like, 'Well, what about this one?’ And them being, like, ‘No!’.

“With Speed Limit I've been singing that for years live – I always do it a cappella and I've always wanted to record it. I've shown it to a few people and no one's really fallen in love with it as much as I have – in terms of a recorded piece – so I think I was a bit shy to put it on Megaflower because I thought I hadn't finished it yet. But with Megaflower Deluxe, it's a deluxe! I want to show you exactly how I sing it live. I can because it doesn't have that ‘the reviews are in’ energy about it. 

“And then Call My Name is maybe one of the oldest songs – I’ve had that since around the same time as Illegal Things and Man Hands. It’s so good to finally have a home for these songs, and for our fans to be finally able to hear them.

"I think I had an easy time putting together the expanded version because the expectation on myself was low – management just wanted me to add a song and have a remix kind of vibe – but I ended up feeling so inspired and wanting to really keep exploring the album,” she adds. 

“I didn't want to ask fans to buy a remix and one additional song, that was important to me – I wanted to fight really hard to make it worth people's while – but at the same time the pressure was super low because no one was expecting it to be an album, so I think it freed me up.”

The collaboration with Gustaf on Scene can be traced back to 2023 when Herrington was awarded the prestigious Grant McLennan Fellowship – the annual prize which sends a Queensland songwriter to London or New York for a number of months to broaden their creative horizons – though she admits that the trip didn’t prove to be all beer and skittles.

“It was really intense, actually,” she admits. “I think I'm a bit more of a creature of habit than I realised, and the opportunity – 100%, the opportunity – to soak up New York City as a writer was sort of at odds with my writing process, which is quite insular and revolves around sitting at home for days at a time. 

“So every day I kind of had this guilt if I was just sitting inside trying to write, and a guilt if I was out exploring the city, because I was asked to do both. And I take it really seriously. The Grant MacLennan prize is very much focused on his legacy as a writer – he did go to these places and get inspired – and I thought that they wouldn't have made this opportunity for us and structured it this way, which is very human, if it wasn't to be taken pretty seriously. So I did do my best to do right by the Fellowship, but it was hard for me. 

“Having said that, once I got home things like Scene started to come. I actually think I can credit the Fellowship for so much writing that I also haven't recorded yet, because my God, I didn't realise what a well I was building during all of that conflicting emotion! I'm so grateful. 

“And Scene, what a funny song! I met Mel [Lucciola], the Gustaf drummer, in New York and she was like, ‘We're fans of you!’ And I was, like, ‘What? We're fans of you!’ It was super cool. That's definitely how Lydia [Gammill] from Gustaf ended up on the song – it wouldn't have happened unless I'd been in New York just kind of schmoozing around.” 

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Alongside the expanded album fans of the five-piece can also avail themselves of the Megaflower Deluxe Coffee Table Book, a chance to peek behind the curtain and experience what it’s like to be in Full Flower Moon Band’s inner sanctum.

"We've just been so lucky to have photographers and videographers sort of built into our touring party for the last few years,” Herrington grins. “They’re a group of people who are kind of just like our extended entourage, which I love. I love walking into a festival and it's like the five of us and a videographer and two photographers, and they're all like filming and taking photos. 

“Specifically in that group is Joel [McDonald] and Reese [Grogan] from Yeah Rad who designed all of the single art, all the merch, most of the tour posters and single posters, and also the album itself – they’re amazing. They're like just multi-faceted, multi-talented people and they're really good at tactile printed media stuff – like I said, they're just brilliant in all areas. They're not just photographers, they're graphic designers and Joel's getting into like collage right now. It's great. 

“And basically if you're sitting on a hard drive of like three or four years of Full Flower Moon Band, and we have the vehicle to do something with that, I think it just felt obvious, like, ‘Let's put it in a book!’ So much great content never sees the light of day – I’m downloading so many folders of content from these guys and if you have 20 slides and a new gig to promote the next day you only end up seeing a couple of those shots in the public domain – so it just felt important to actually archive the work.

“And it's not just going to be Joel and Reese's photos either, we've got like contributions from a lot of the photographers who've toured with us – including James Ladder, who does a lot of our video stuff – so putting the book together felt like a privilege for sure, but also kind of important because there's just such a depth of stuff there. 

“Plus I've always wanted to have a moment where I get to scan my writing and it’s such an ego trip to be, like, ‘These are my original lyrics!’ But the boys have been very grounded – it’s going to be a lot of photos. They didn't let me go too crazy. I was showing them the wildest poems. I was like, ‘This poem is about dishwashers!’ And they’re like, ‘No’.” 

Amongst all of the other great things that happened to Full Flower Moon Band in 2025 – such as releasing their own Mountain Goat beer, taking out The Triffid’s QLD Album of The Year award, and being announced as main support for the Foo Fighters’ Tasmanian show in early-2026 – the most surreal moment must have been when a reel of the band performing Megaflower album track West Side went viral.

They’d already received mad props from their music heroes in the past – Iggy Pop famously spun their music and talked them up on BBC Radio 6 Music – but suddenly they had rock and entertainment stars such as Jack Black, Sleaford Mods, Noel Fielding, and Cage The Elephant popping up amongst their legions of new followers.

“It kind of became addictive at one point to just refresh my Instagram notifications and see another person that is very respected jumping aboard,” Herrington admits. “It was surreal and there's also like a fight or flight thing where you're sort of, like, 'Oh this has happened, now what?’

“In this industry you're kind of taught to be an opportunist, so it’s, like, ‘Do I message them? What do I do?’ I was already following all of them – I'm a fan of all these people – but I think learning to live with the humanity of it is key, that they enjoyed either that viral clip or they've heard our music. 

“That's wonderful and that is special,” she adds. “It’s also a human engaging with a piece of art, so it’s best to try and ground it back down to that, I think. They are human and so is everyone else.”

Given the fact that Full Flower Moon Band have spent over a decade chasing their musical dreams – and that everything they’ve achieved has been entirely under their own steam in the independent realms, Herrington is understandably proud of what she and her bandmates have achieved in recent times.

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy,” she chuckles. “I don't know what a normal trajectory of time is – I know that a lot of bands stay emerging for ten years like we have – but when I take stock of Full Flower, I take stock of so many amazing moments and it is really humbling. I'm pretty chuffed that it's worked out as well as it has so far. 

“There's always more decisions and more things that have to be done, but more and more at the moment when I look back, I go, ‘Wow, okay, if it all fell apart tomorrow, we’ve still done something special’. There's no denying that we have a community and have meant something to people and that's really cool. 

“And then it's just, ‘Okay, what will all these emotions feel like times a hundred if we keep going and we become a ‘non-breaking through’ band, like actual top-tier stuff?’ I think about that all the time because I’m already so full of love for the journey we’ve been on and my heart’s so big when I ponder our community, it’s, like, ‘Wow, it gets bigger?!’.” 

In regards to her ‘Babyshakes Dillon’ persona, Herrington is quick to defray any rock star connotations, explaining how the character is just a prop to help shield the real her from the scrutiny that’s part and parcel of navigating the rock’n’roll realms.

“There's a little bit of idolisation in it, which is just like how [David] Bowie always had different characters and layers,” she reflects. “I coined ‘Babyshakes’ over ten years ago now, so we're talking about a much younger artist being like, ‘When I make it big, people will know me as Babyshakes!’, and I think it kind of morphed from there. 

“But ultimately it's a vehicle for separation from people knowing me. In interviews and stuff I’m Kate – like, I’m not talking like Babyshakes right now, I'm not a psycho where it's like always on. I’m not in that persona in any other place except when I’m onstage and I just want to be a mirror or bigger than life for the audience. 

“If the audience is looking at me and going, ‘That’s my mate Kate that I saw at the pub’, then I that's a little bit different to, ‘Oh my God, Babyshakes is here!’,” she adds.

“They don't even need to know that my name is Babyshakes, but for me, I feel less accessible in a good way if there is some sort of barrier – like you don't know my life, you only know me at the gigs and on recordings. 

“I think it has turned into something that just makes me feel a bit safer as an artist. Not that I'm hiding that my name's Kate, but also if you want to idolise something, it's Babyshakes. Don't idolise me. 

“It’s giving a vehicle for all that emotion, which I think I touched on a little bit in Scene, in a way. I don't think I could have written the lyrics for Scene unless I was able to be, like, ‘Well, Babyshakes said that, not me!’.”

Ultimately, at this juncture Herrington is just immensely grateful for everything that Full Flower Moon Band has achieved (or had bestowed upon them) in recent times, and is approaching the Megaflower reissue as a way of giving back to their devoted (and burgeoning) fanbase.

“All of this stuff that we’re doing is just for people who are excited about it – you’re not more or less of a fan of Full Flower if you do or don't buy Megaflower Deluxe or the coffee table book,” she states emphatically. “This is fun and it's for people who are excited for it. I’m already grateful that we get to do these things and it's just coming from a place of love. 

“So anyone who wants to dive in deeper, anyone who wants to get 100 behind-the-scenes photographs of us – there it is. It's all fun, and it’s also a thank you – like, ‘thank you for such an amazing run with the Megaflower era’ – and I hope everyone enjoys these juicy morsels of whatever was left over. I think it's great.”

The deluxe edition of Full Flower Moon Band’s Megaflower is out today.