Brisbane, AU · dance-punk · electropop · dance

Confidence Man

4 festivals played ↓

Australian four-piece playing dance-pop as full choreographed comedy — costume changes, deadpan bits, and one of the best live shows on any bill anywhere.

Confidence Man formed in Brisbane in 2016, when musicians who had crossed paths in the city's scene, having played in bands such as The Belligerents, Moses Gunn Collective and The Jungle Giants, decided to try something different. The songs started as a joke among friends before the group realised the material was worth pursuing under new stage names.

The lineup pairs vocalists Janet Planet and Sugar Bones with two masked, largely silent instrumentalists, Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie, who reportedly took their stage names from tombstones. Goodchild and McGuffie handle keyboards and drums while staying anonymous onstage, leaving the vocalists to run the choreography and comic business out front.

Their music runs through dance-pop, nu-disco, house and new rave, built on blunt hooks and spoken-sung, often comic lyrics, heard on tracks such as "Boyfriend (Repeat)." Confidence Man signed to the UK label Heavenly Recordings and released the single "Bubblegum" in 2017, followed by the debut album Confident Music for Confident People in 2018. Touring across Europe that year included a sold-out show at London's Scala.

Live, the show is heavily choreographed, with costume changes and scripted between-song business that has done as much as the records to build the band's reputation, letting the group's deadpan humour carry through the sets as much as the songs themselves.

Second album Tilt, led by the single "Holiday," followed in 2022 and reached number seven on the Australian charts. A remix EP, Re-Tilt, brought in Tame Impala, CHAI and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The band then moved to Polydor, pairing with Daniel Avery and DJ Seinfeld on singles before releasing a third album, 3AM (La La La), in 2024, by which point one of the masked instrumentalists was performing under an unconfirmed identity.

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