From Covid-era origins to international stages, the Gold Coast quartet are proving that the future of music belongs to the fearlessly independent

Words by Felix Bartlett | Oct 24, 2025

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From a room covered in scribbled lyrics on the walls somewhere on Australia’s Gold Coast, Barnaby and his bandmates in Friends Of Friends are quietly crafting something that feels both familiar and completely fresh. It’s a sound that’s been catching ears far beyond their hometown’s glitzy tourist strips, and for good reason.

“We were born into COVID, so we cut our teeth doing a lot of writing and recording more than we had played live at that point,” Barnaby explains, reflecting on how the band came together around 2020. The name itself tells the story, everything happened through mutual connections, literally friends of friends, which became the driving force behind their community-focused approach.

What started as necessity has become their greatest strength. Earlier this year, the band made the bold decision to handle all their mixing and mastering in-house, cutting out external producers entirely. “It’s not only a money thing, but it’s a bit of a fuck you to the system and the labels and the gatekeepers,” Barnaby says with a laugh. “It feels so good to be able to say, yes, we’ve got cool music, but we also do literally everything, and we don’t need you.”

That DIY ethos shines through their 2024 EP “Real Life Right Now,” which felt like their first truly cohesive statement as a band. But it’s their upcoming October release that has Barnaby most excited. “I knew that I wanted this EP to just feel like it was on 11, you know, just absolutely everything is maximum,” he says. “When we do the big songs, I want it to be 11. When we do the poppy moments, I want it to be really poppy, in our own way.”

The recording process sounds wonderfully chaotic. Barnaby will force his bandmate Franco to sit on the couch with his guitar, digging around for those perfect little moments – a screech here, a whammy bar moment there. “It’s so funny, but it’s just these little moments of pure deliciousness that can carry a feeling. We’ve had songs written off of little moments he’s done on the guitar that I just caught and looped.”

This experimental approach has led them to create tracks that feel like emotional rollercoasters. Take “Happier,” which Barnaby describes as his most personal song on the new EP. “It’s the story of being with someone you love on this rooftop, looking at the stars and just hoping that one day all the things that are frustrating and difficult about the world just sort of evaporate, and you can just be happy for one moment.” The song manages to feel uplifting while carrying something darker at its core – “the beautiful and the desiccated all in one.”

Then there’s “Skin,” which started as a love song but twisted into something more complex. “It ended up feeling like this obsession that you just can’t scratch, this edge you can never itch,” Barnaby explains. “You know that feeling when you’re in love and you don’t quite know what the other person’s thinking, and you get home and you’re just going through everything in your mind, obsessing.”

But perhaps the most intriguing track is “Synthetic Flower Chainsaw,” which closes the EP with a robotic manifesto delivered in Mac OS terminal voice. Inspired by an obscure track called “Mum Does the Washing” that explains government systems through domestic chores, Barnaby wanted to create his own strange statement piece. “It feels good off the tongue, but they’re just such completely different concepts, and it feels like the EP is full of these different concepts that are just glued together by my voice and a few instrument moments.”

The Gold Coast setting plays a bigger role than you might expect for a band that doesn’t fit the typical surf rock mold. “The Gold Coast is superficial in almost every way, which has its own little beauty,” Barnaby observes. “It’s literally like Las Vegas in the sense that people go there to party and then go home, but we’re all still just trying to have a coffee down the road. It’s got this plastic feeling, and I kind of love it. I want to scratch at everything and see what’s underneath, see everyone’s little weird stories.”

That desire to dig beneath surfaces extends to their live shows, which have been gaining serious momentum. Supporting Kasabian at Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall in front of 3,500 people stands out as a career highlight so far. “The energy in that room was just electric, and those UK fans seemed like they could really connect with us, which is always hard when you’re supporting,” Barnaby recalls. “There’s usually a lot of crossed arms and polite golf claps, but they definitely connected with us.”

Their sound draws from everywhere – The 1975, Blink-182, U2‘s “With or Without You,” Nine Inch Nails‘ “The Downward Spiral.” It’s pop-punk nostalgia filtered through modern restlessness, creating what Barnaby calls “the perfect playlist.” “I get so bored writing the same song. I want our music to be something where you don’t just put one track on your gym playlist. I want you to listen to the whole thing and let me try to entertain you through it.”

That entertainment factor is clearly working. The band has been picking up momentum internationally, particularly here in the UK, which makes sense given their roots. “We’re all from there originally, and Franco’s from the Philippines, so we feel like we’re an international band already,” Barnaby explains. “It’s almost coming home in a way.”

With tours supporting Stereophonics on the horizon and plans for UK dates in December, Friends Of Friends are riding a wave that shows no signs of breaking. They’re constantly searching for that feeling that cuts through people’s souls in the form of “that bizarre mix of raw and polished, chaotic and beautiful.”

In a music landscape often criticised for being stale or overly formulaic, Friends Of Friends represent something genuinely fresh. They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but they’re definitely painting it in colours nobody else is using, scratching beneath that shiny Gold Coast surface to find the weird, wonderful stories hiding underneath.

Synthetic Flower Chainsaw is out now