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Those who suggest the era of the hyped artist is over – a victim of declining interest in the music press – might consider the case of New York’s Fcukers. Such was the buzz generated by the electroclash-adjacent duo’s early singles that they ended up touring five continents within barely a year of their first live show. They were invited to DJ at Paris fashion week by Celine and to collaborate on a remix by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. Charli xcx pronounced herself a fan, as did Billie Eilish, David Byrne and Beck, the last appearing on stage with them in Los Angeles to perform their cover of his 1996 single Devils Haircut. Tame Impala subsequently took them on tour as a support act, then Harry Styles – never tardy when it comes to associating himself with a hip name – invited them to open for him.
The effect of all this has been startling. A video for 2024 single Homie Don’t Shake featuring nothing more than vocalist Shanny Wise miming to the song while sitting on an NYC bus – its budget allegedly amounting to nothing more than the cost of the ticket – has earned nearly half a million views. Another single, Bon Bon, has more than 10m streams on Spotify alone.
The question of how they achieved it, without major label backing, in a world where no one really cares whether what’s left of the music press sticks you on the cover and breathlessly proclaims you the world’s best new band, is an intriguing one. Fcukers themselves profess bemusement, although it’s worth noting that they tick a lot of hip boxes. They’ve been lumped in with both the revival of interest in electroclash and with how indie sleaze repurposed grubby, cathartic, post-9/11 hedonism for the post-pandemic era. There’s a certain nonchalant snottiness about their sound, which melds Wise’s blank-eyed vocals to dancefloor rhythms. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine them performing at Erol Alkan’s old clubnight Trash alongside Cansei de Ser Sexy or New Young Pony Club. Plus the lyrics of If You Wanna Party, Come Over to My House or Homie Don’t Shake (“Champagne on my cornflakes / Blacked out, show up late”) slot neatly into a post-Brat landscape.
But listening to their debut album, you wonder if the reasons for the rapidity of Fcukers’ rise might be more straightforward than vogueishness. Produced by Kenneth Blume – formerly known as the hip-hop-adjacent Kenny Beats, currently riding high thanks to his work on Geese’s breakthrough album Getting Killed – Ö is noticeably more polished than the singles with which they attracted so much attention but still summons an appealingly seamy mood. Everything sounds as if it’s happening in the small hours, whether on a packed dancefloor or elsewhere, and the airy quality of Wise’s voice suggests not calm but someone who’s taken a shortcut to a state of beatific insouciance and might pass out in the not-too-distant future.
A playlist of inspirations Fcukers contributed to Spotify suggested a deep love for underground 90s US house: it featured DJ Sneak, Kerri Chandler, Deep Dish and Derrick Carter, music the duo’s Jackson Walker Lewis says he discovered while an impoverished DJ, searching for cheap secondhand records to play. You can certainly detect the genre’s influence in the muted deep house textures of Beatback and Lucky, but their penchant for vintage dance music extends further, into old school drum’n’bass (the double bass driven backing track of Getaway feels like a charming younger relation of Roni Size’s It’s a Jazz Thing), UK garage (Butterflies), trip-hop (TTYGF) and Balearic (Feel the Real).
But their real talent lies less in their ability to pick through record store bargain bins or conjure up a sweaty small-hours atmosphere than in applying their source material to the business of modern pop. Everything on Ö comes at you in a pointed, sub-three-minute burst. They’re good at hooks that drill into your brain through repetition – no one is going to criticise their lyrics for being verbose – but pleasurably so: the earworm of I Like It Like That is too appealing to become irritating; the candyfloss melodies of Butterflies and Feel the Real are charming rather than sickly.
There are moments where the speed of Fcukers’ success becomes obvious, where you sense things have been slightly rushed: even on an album where subtlety clearly isn’t the point, the techstep drum’n’bass of Play Me is a little too blunt in its approach, while on Lonely, the duo seem to lose their identity and slip into the realm of boilerplate pop. There’s also the issue of longevity, how music so brashly immediate might develop. But that’s a question for the future. Right now, Ö just sounds like snappy, speedy, escapist fun: no wonder its makers have risen so fast.
This week Alexis listened to
Ain’t – Grazer
Ain’t clearly aren’t the only act around seeking to reanimate 90s slacker rock, but Grazer hits a particularly appealing sweet spot, shifting from a heavy-lidded shrug to a more agitated propulsion.
