'We Couldn't Have Been Farther Away From Each Other': Fan Girl Go The Distance For Their '8HRS' EP

As the members of Fan Girl join from their respective locations to chat about their newly-released EP, they're struck with the revelation that the group has been a going concern for exactly a decade now.

Expressing something of a shock as they realise the anniversary of band's debut in April 2016 has come around so quickly, it's easy to see why they forgot to bust out the gifts for each other.

"It's been up and down," explains multi instrumentalist Vincent McIntyre. "Personal tragedies, COVID, cost of living – the fun stuff – has made it kind of hard at times.

"However, I do think it feels like the last couple years and, and right now in particular feels as vital as it's ever felt, which is great. It feels as exciting and as though there's as much momentum internally as there was the day that we started it, which I think is pretty special."

Indeed, Fan Girl's beginning was an auspicious one. Cutting their teeth on the live scene with stellar performances, supporting international acts such as Minus The Bear, and then releasing a string of well-received singles all gave way to the release of their debut album, 2018's Elephant Room.

Not even two months later, however, the band were struck by tragedy when founding member Jack Wood passed away. In response, the group withdrew briefly, not releasing new music until well over a year later.

Fans at the time weren't aware of it, but they'd effectively just seen the first phase of Fan Girl come to a close.

"That era kind of sits pickled in the jar in time for me," McIntyre explains. "We haven't – well, me in particular – haven't been that keen on revisiting it. Not because it's sad or not because I'm not proud of it, but because it just feels very compartmentalised in that time."

It wasn't the first time they took some time away, and likely, it won't be the last, but each time Fan Girl have returned, they admit to being renewed with a different energy, packing different influences and things that excite them into the mix.

"We're not reinventing the wheel here, we're still just playing guitars and making noise," McIntyre contends. "But I think every time we have kind of come back together after a period of time for whatever reason, we've come back with a pretty renewed idea of what we want to do."

As time has gone on, so too has the band evolved somewhat. Now a five piece, the musical evolution has also brought with it the addition of bassist and guitarist Tom Dowling, who has gone from "always being there" in the past to being an official member.

"Writing wise, the first record was pretty much just Vince and Jack writing it," recalls vocalist Noah Harris, "And then I came along and wrote the vocals to it.

"After Jack died, it was a bit more of me and Vince collaborating on stuff with Luke [Thomas, guitarist]. Now on the newer stuff, Tom's more involved in the writing as well, so it's kind of changing who's shaping the writing as well over time as well."

"We really have pushed the experience side of things forward," offers McIntyre. "We want to enjoy the process, we want to be happy with what we're doing, and hold ourselves to a high standard and be doing stuff that excites us, but it's about enjoying it and having fun."

"I think we've all been doing this for like all long enough," adds Dowling. "I've been in various acts where so much of that time was spent poring over things and making sure that everything was going to be as good as it was ever going to be.

"And at some point you reach a level of competency and trust in yourselves that you can let go and assume that you're going to make the right decision without interrogating every single one. 

"And that makes for a much more spontaneous and fun experience in the writing room, I think."

That fun is undoubtedly evident in the music. Fan Girl's music is an enjoyable experience, no matter what side of the fence you're on. It's noisy, blissful alternative rock that washes over you, with its precise sonic textures and immersive compositions evoking memories of early shoegaze and noise rock at times.

But it's also accessible, somewhat paradoxically. And impressively, Fan Girl have managed to keep this sonic thread going over the years, despite their stopping and starting.

Re-emerging from the morass of COVID with a string of standalone singles, the group released their real or staged EP in 2024, and remained largely silent until they started teasing the arrival of this year's 8HRS EP.

While many of those singles from a few years back were built around the notion of simply writing to release music by a certain date, it also gives an unexpected freedom in which the group could experiment a little more than previous. When it comes to an EP, however, a sense of cohesion returns to the mix.

"We made a decision a long time ago that we weren't going to live in boxes, and we were just going to make whatever kind of music that we wanted to make," explains Harris. "With singles, sometimes that would happen, where there'd be an indie rock song, something that's a bit heavier, or something that's dancier.

"Whereas on the EP, it was nice to know they don't need to sound the same, but there is a cohesion through it and there was a theme through it."

"I think working on a body of work is definitely like where this band really gels," muses Thomas. "We can get into a space where we were working on the collective vision of like songs together.

"I don't think we flourish, but I think in that space we work really well. So I think it was kind of cool to actually just refocus on one collective thought or feeling at a time, and then the new EP is just like another version of that, which is kind of cool."

The creation of their latest EP is made all the more impressive by the physical distance that is often between the members of Fan Girl.

As Harris speaks, the dark sky behind him slowly lightens, revealing that while his other bandmates are in Melbourne, he's experiencing the morning hours of France.

Having lived in Paris for a year, one could begin to wonder about the logistics of writing and recording with the band – a topic compounded by McIntrye's presence in Guadalajara, Mexico for much of the EP's writing.

"We couldn't have been farther away from each other, geographically," McIntrye notes. "It's called 8HRS because there's 24 hours in a day, and the time zones were exactly eight hours apart. So at any one time, someone was supposed to be asleep. It was someone's morning, and then the other person would be having a beer.

"It was really fun and it took a minute to kind of settle into the groove of that working style because although Noah had been away at that point for a couple months, up until that point we'd always done everything in the room. 

"So there was a bit of a learning curve, for sure, with writing, collaborating, and communicating."

Of course, any musician will gladly tell you that they do their best work with their bandmates when they're in the same room (unless you're in The Police), but for Fan Girl, they've impressively managed to make the distance work for them, rather than against them.

"Tom spent a bit of time overseas in the US, we went to the UK as a band, Noah moved to Paris, I was living in Mexico for three months, and I was in the US for a bit as well" McIntyre lists.

"I think the experience of our lives in different places has affected the music more than the distance affecting the songwriting dynamic. It's still not quite as streamlined as when we're in the same city, obviously, but I reckon we figured out a really workable dynamic with this like online collaboration thing that kind of got us to basically the same place as we are when we're all in the room together anyway.

"But I think the thing that feels different isn't actually the process of collaboration so much as where we're all at and what we want to do musically," he adds. "That's vastly changed yet again, but in a really exciting manner and was probably informed by where we're living and what we're doing with our lives as well.

"The latest EP and what we're working on now outside of that all feels like it couldn't have happened, had everything else not happened, basically. It feels like it's kicked the band into corners that we didn't expect to be or wouldn't have even thought of."

Indeed, the resulting EP isn't just a testament to Fan Girl's talents as musicians (though it is an impressive batch of tracks), but also to the way in which they manage to operate within the confines of distance.

"I think the band would've ceased to exist quite a while ago if we didn't have the trust in each other and the understanding of what works best for collaboration between us," McIntyre explains. 

"We're an ancient band at this point by some standards, but I daresay if it hadn't been quite as long of us getting to know each other and becoming the closest of friends, but also really getting into the weeds in terms of dynamics and hearing each other out and everything, then I don't know if the distance thing would've been doable. 

"If it had to happen, it has definitely come at the right time," he adds. "And if anything it's kind of jazzed it up in a way that… I expect we would've continued and still done stuff we were really excited about, but it's probably put us somewhere different and more exciting."

Though distance is a topic that all and sundry might be tired of hearing about by this point, it's a vital part of not just the record's creation, but the sonic identity of the album, too. 

"A lot of the basis of the songs is informed by Vince's recordings made in Mexico, and a lot of the foley sounds, the acoustic guitars, and things like that are from a lot of the iPhone recordings that he made over there," Dowling explains. 

"I think you can certainly build on that with everybody sort of contributing in their own sense where they were and the places that they were."

However, it goes even deeper. Easy Now features the sound of rubbish tracks in Guadalajara, Echo Grey features acoustic guitars tracked from a $50 guitar played in McIntyre's bedroom in Mexico.

The piano for Worth It? was tracked in a room in which McIntyre was working that featured a distinct "coldness," while Submarine was written in New York, and also features original aspects of the original demo recording.

"You then have Noah literally tracking his vocals in Paris," McIntyre adds. "It's not necessarily that he's just in a studio in Paris, but that is from the other side of the planet, and you have all these other things kind of coming together."

"Vince has all those associations with the sounds, where he can hear the sounds and they remind him of rubbish trucks, whereas I just have the real association just sitting in the Metro, just in the corner listening to the songs," Harris adds. "Listening to the demos without any words, writing words, and then going into the studio and writing. 

"So I don't have any of these location-specific things, I just have that memory of place in a completely different setting, which is writing underground on a packed train, which is interesting."

But if distance is a defining feature of the EP, what then does 8HRS say about who Fan Girl are as a collective and creative entity in 2026?

"I'm not out here claiming that we just made a Y2K pop record or a proper drum and bass record, but I do think what it says about us is that I think it's the first time we've really actively detached from not the sound of where the band started, but the initial idea of the band," McIntyre muses.

"And what has happened is that idea has slowly faded away over time, and we've worked on not pushing it away, but progressing from it. But because of the time and the distance and all this stuff, we've ended up in a place where that doesn't exist any more, in my personal opinion. What exists is the working relationship and friendship between us and the shared musical values between us.

"I think the EP is the first time where that is completely and utterly what we're working off," he adds. We're not working off some kind of 17-year-old's dream version of the rock band, we're working off the reality of where we are in our lives, what we want to do artistically, and the lack of guidelines or restrictions we have on that and how exciting that is."

"If there's one sort of defining thing about our musical working relationship, removed from our obvious friendships and all of that stuff, it's that I think we all get pretty bored pretty quickly of what we make and the sounds that we use," Dowling offers.

"Not with our fondness for it, but I don't think we're ever chasing to repeat sounds or styles or anything like that. There's a pretty dynamic thrust towards making music that excites us and interests us, and those interests are very dynamic and changeable."

With their new EP out in the world, Fan Girl are already looking ahead to what's next, with big plans already in motion for the rest of the year and beyond – including their first album in close to a decade.

"I think we're about to do something that we've all been dreaming of doing," explains Thomas. "Obviously making an album is such a big undertaking, and I think it's kind of special to put a body of work together of that kind of size. You just have to put time and energy into that. 

"And I think the people that we're looking at working with, and also going overseas to play and record, like, that's what you dream of doing. And I think we're doing that now. 

"So I think it's like a pretty special moment in the band's history," he adds. "To be in that environment, I think it will lead to something cool happening."

Fan Girl's 8HRS EP is out now.

This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body