Here are a few things you might witness at a Confidence Man show: frontwoman Janet Planet prancing around in a light-up cone bra; numerous (if sometimes precarious) aerial stunts; frontman Sugar Bones ripping off his shirt and spraying champagne into the audience, fake blood dripping from his mouth; a staggering number of costume changes; shirtless bandmates Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild in beekeeper veils behind the DJ decks; neogothic-futurist sets pulled from the imaginations of Rob Sinclair and Bráulio Amado… I could go on, but what’s most important to know about this Australian dance-pop band is that, above all, they’re here to entertain.
As Confidence Man has deadpan-shimmied their way into the collective consciousness via provocative music videos, viral festival performances, and glistening Eurodance-inspired pop hits, they’ve also managed to commodify their partying tendencies into a bonafide career. Take their upcoming third studio album 3AM (LA LA LA), set for release on October 18th and formed, much like its predecessors, during long and uninhibited late-night sessions in their home studio. Influenced in part by the industrial, go-go-go energy of their newfound home in London and rooted in the nineties-rave sound ubiquitous to the city’s queer club scene, 3AM goes to show that to Confidence Man, the only way to write a party album is to dive headfirst into its subject matter.
At least, that’s what front duo Janet Planet and Sugar Bones tell me when we sit down backstage at Osheaga 2024, just a few hours before they blazed onto the Island Stage in one of the weekend’s most talked-about performances.
NEXUS RADIO: Welcome to Montreal! How are you enjoying the city so far?
JANET PLANET: It’s been great, the food’s so yum. We had poutine.
NR: Was it your first time?
JP: No, we first tried it in… Where did we tour?
SUGAR BONES: Toronto.
JP: Toronto, right. But the one I had today was better.
NR: The Quebecois invented poutine. It’s taken very seriously here.
SB: It’s serious business.
JP: Like us with our meat pies.
NR: Exactly. But you guys are in London now, which you say helped usher in this new era of Confidence Man. How else has your move impacted you?
JP: I think we got a little obsessed with the industrial aspect of London. I got really obsessed with pigeons and the grind. And the people are really cool, like crazy creative folks who are just doing cool shit. As soon as we moved there, we got immersed in this really amazing queer club scene, and we kind of became club kids in our old age.
SB: Yeah, late-in-life club kids. It’s just like a really high-energy city, like go-go-go. You walk out on the streets, and you feel it straight away.
JP: It’s exciting for us because where we’re from in Australia, it’s kind of a big country town. And London is the antithesis of that.
NR: Are there any parts of Australia that you miss?
JP: I miss the food. The food in Australia is really yum, lots of fresh produce, whereas in the UK the produce is a bit grimy. I don’t know where they get their vegetables from, but they’re not growing ‘em.
SB: Yeah, I think they grown them in, like, sewers out back.
JP: But the party scene in London makes the move worth it. It’s like all of the unhealthy things are better there, and all the healthy things are better in Australia.
NR: Do you guys ever take breaks from partying?
JP: While touring, I have to be careful because I lose my voice easily. And since the show is so high energy, I can’t do it hungover. Sugar’s done it a few times hungover.
SB: Yeah, but the fiftieth time you wake up hungover on a show day, you’re like, “I’m never doing this again.”
JP: I’ve learned my lesson the hard way. And everyone thinks we’re completely wasted, but we’re actually pretty zoned in.
NR: I’m sure you have to be. It’s a really physically demanding show.
SB: Yeah, I’m like throwing Janet around now with all these flips and stuff. I can’t drop her.
JP: My mum is not happy. She’s like, “You’re gonna kill yourself!”.
NR: I watched your performance at Glastonbury. You guys are really pushing your limits. The audience never really knows what they’re going to get.
JP: I mean, we don’t know either! Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. There’s a punk aspect to it, too. We’re not trying to be perfect and couldn’t be perfect if we wanted to, anyway.
SB: Fortunately, we’ve worked that into the style—a bit shit’s part of the aesthetic. (laughs) That’s our hot tip to any new bands starting out, just work that in.
NR: Very solid advice. What do you make of the resurgence of 90s rave as a musical aesthetic?
SB: It’s exciting. The UK’s always had a bit of it, and now it’s sort of catching on internationally. So many great artists are coming out of that world.
JP: I think we also kind of got lucky in that the sound that we were always chasing has now come into fashion. We were already doing it.
SB: So much of being in a band is the luck of the draw with what comes into fashion.
NR: But there’s also something to be said for 90s rave providing a different clubbing experience. It’s all about letting go and having the club as a safe space.
JP: It’s definitely more euphoric, which, like… If you’re taking a pinger, that’s what you want.
SB: Yeah, it’s bringing back the freedom and fun and euphoria of the old club scene.
NR: To what extent do you think humor plays a role in your performances?
SB: A big part. Irony’s a big part of it. I remember playing Governor’s Ball in New York six years ago, and we were first on the main stage that day. And the gates opened while we were sound-checking, and we saw hundreds of kids running down the hill toward the barrier. And we were like, “Shit, we’re really popular here.” Then we looked closer—they were all wearing Eminem shirts. That night during our set, I remember I was in hotpants doing air guitar, and this guy was at the barracks like…
JP: He was so angry.
SB: But I think that’s sort of the cheeky, fun nature of our music. And it’s becoming more understood now.
JP: We definitely piss some people off. I think if you’re doing that, you’re doing something right.
SB: We like pissing people off.
NR: The outfits are always a highlight of a Confidence Man show. How do you guys approach curating fashion for your performances and where do you get your inspiration from?
JP: When we started out my mum made all my costumes, and I designed them. Eventually, she got fired because I was like, “I want this, I want that,” and she was like, “I can’t handle this anymore.” So, I met this really amazing guy in Melbourne who makes the costumes with me.
NR: I remember being struck by the sculptural suits you wore at Sziget last year.
JP: They’re retired now, which… Thank God. They had these metal pole inserts where you could press buttons, and the shoulders would move like self-dancing suits. The problem was that we’d have to start out the set in them, and we’d be standing there for fifteen minutes before the show and you literally can’t move your arms.
SB: I’d put them on and be like, “My nose is itching… Someone? Anyone?”
JP: I still do the costumes, which is probably the worst part of my job. It’s so stressful because they have to be practical and move in the right way, and also, they get completely attacked by the two of us. They’re very easily destroyed. When it comes to inspo, I suppose a lot of it comes from nineties runways.
SB: Nineties runway that you can rip off quickly.
JP: Yeah, I think Sugar has, like, four shirts come off in the last four songs. Four different shirts.
SB: Well, if it works once, then do it four different times. That’s our motto.
NR: Why not? That’s so entertaining!
SB: Exactly!
NR: What does being an entertainer mean to you?
SB: I think it’s about going the extra mile. Anyone can get up and play their music off some decks, and that can still be a great gig. But I think if you want to take it to that next level, you have to put time into every visual aspect. And know how you’re going to treat the crowd—you can’t just go up and grovel at them. You can treat them a bit mean.
JP: And putting the work in. We’ve been doing these swing classes for the past year, which is where we’ve learned to do all these aerials. It’s why we have all these flips in our sets now. And it’s like, no one’s going to do this for me. I actually have to go out and learn how to do this.
NR: Do you know where you’d like to see your choreography evolve?
JP: I suppose just bigger and more ridiculous, though I think we’ve used all our flips, so we might have to go back to dance school.
SB: I swear half of the best moves are just the dumbest ones.
JP: The dumbest shit… And I also just love that people are always like, “You guys are such good dancers,” or “The choreography is so good.” We’re the worst dancers. I can’t touch my toes.
SB: We started the swing classes in preparation for Glastonbury, but I injured my back a couple of weeks before. So, we hadn’t done the full choreography until Glastonbury itself.
JP: It’s really funny because you can see in the footage that every time we land a flip, we kind of turn around to each other in shock.
NR: You worked with Rob Sinclair on the set design for Glastonbury, right?
SB: Yeah, he came on board because he liked the band. We had a couple of meetings with him and he was just ready for it.
JP: The set was actually a collaboration between Bráulio Amado, Rob, and us. I kept saying, “More stuff, more stuff, more stuff.” And he allowed us to do it.
NR: Can you tell me a little more about how you prepare for your live performances versus a DJ set?
SB: We don’t do much at the DJ sets. That’s the boys [Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild]. It’s great because Janet and I can get as drunk as we like, and we don’t have to worry about, you know, killing ourselves.
JP: I prefer a DJ set for that reason.
SB: The live show involves us prepping for hours beforehand. Though if you’re stuck in the green room for six hours, you go crazy. We’ve started warming up an hour before.
JP: Mostly because of his back situation. He’s an old man.
SB: Yeah… We just realized you can’t do this shit without warming up. It’s been way easier.
NR: Your upcoming third album, 3AM (LA LA LA), is set for release in October. How are you feeling about it?
SB: We’re feeling really good. We figured out early on the best process for us, and that just happens to be a long day in the studio starting at midday, after a big lunch. And going as late as we can.
JP: Just getting absolutely wasted. We’re so much better wasted—it’s so weird. But I think if you’re going to be writing a party album or a euphoric club/house record, you need to be partying. Otherwise, it kind of seems…
SB: Otherwise, you’ve got to force it. When you’re in that state, it’s so much easier. Things felt very natural this time. We were all just on the same page with the sound we wanted. We just went bigger, more euphoric.
JP: It was strange because with our second record, we were trying to find our sound and going through all these nineties influences. But with this record, we were all kind of one mind about it. And this record feels very ConMan.
SB: It’s the most ConMan record yet.
NR: At what point did you feel like it was done? When do you draw the line?
SB: The deadline. The label deadline. (laughs)
JP: Though, to be fair, we didn’t have a lack of songs. We were just fighting over which ones. I think we’ll have a deluxe album with like, sixteen songs on it.
SB: Having the deluxe release takes the pressure off cause if there’s a song you loved that didn’t make the album, you know it’ll still come out.
NR: I’m always curious to know how artists listen to music. What’s your typical set-up?
JP: We probably listen off of our DJ decks at home the most.
SB: Or solo, we put on a bit of Neil Young in our headphones and mellow out.
JP: It’s funny because everyone keeps asking, “What were you listening to when writing this record?”. I didn’t listen to any music except for Neil Young.
NR: Finally, is there anything specific you’re excited about with the rollout for this album?
JP: Everything! I’m excited to make the live show and have a bit more money to push the limits of a live show.
SB: We’ve always wanted to do bigger and crazier ideas. It’s nice to finally be able to do some of them.
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Confidence Man’s third studio album, 3AM (LA LA LA), is out October 18th via Chaos/Polydor/I Oh You. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
