South Australian duo Heaps Good Friends have been mates for over a decade. With their super catchy singles ‘Let’s Hug Longer’ and ‘Olympic Sneakers’ gaining a whole lot of attention, these friends are just having a wild time doing what they love.
“It’s been sick,” smiles Nick O’Connor. “We didn’t start the project for any other reason than having a really good time writing music with Emma [Fradd], and so it was just crazy fun to get rotation with the fourth song we wrote [Let’s Hug Longer].”
With Emma away in Europe for years, it was only last year that the duo began collaborating in Adelaide. “We kind of did some email projects while she was over there [Europe] and that was cool, but you could really feel the gap,” he explains. “When Emma came back to Australia it was like ‘get on a plane, we’re going to do this in the same room’.
“We wrote the first four songs, like wrote, recorded, exported, mastered at home, everything in the one day. That was really fun, and I think that’s how it was born in a good way under a good start because it was no fucking around, no umming and ahhing. With all the fun and excitement we were experiencing from a special moment of your best buddy coming down to record something sick, it just got time-captured in those songs,” O’Connor says. “It was before anything had happened so there was no pressure, there was no band and there was no future, it was just let’s have a really fun time right now. We weren’t giving a fuck and it seemed to really work.” .
Doing no musical wrong with their new material, Heaps Good Friends landed a spot on this year’s Groovin the Moo thanks to their first single. It was from there, that the live show was established with the addition of drummer Dan.
“When we were a duo, we hadn’t ever played live. It was just two people multi-instrumentalising in a studio,” he explains. “We then made the decision to build the band. It kind of went the cart before the horse in a way.
“Dan is just a massive blessing,” O’Connor continues. “He’s just a legend all round, a positive energy fountain of good times with beautiful aesthetics. He’s a fucking cool human and it just worked out real good.”
Despite having performed more shows than they’d had rehearsals, Heaps Good Friends were lucky enough to tour the country alongside The Jungle Giants for their most recent tour.
“That tour was dope, I didn’t want to leave. I was so sad when it ended,” O’Connor says. “The venues are all sick, their show is sick, their team was super nice and everything was organised, and we just got to roll on in to that bad boy.”
The Adelaide dance-pop wonders are now gearing up for their third single release, and the release of a debut EP next year to wrap up their first round of songs. Along with their forthcoming releases, Heaps Good Friends have landed a few festival and event slots for the next few months, including a gig at the Grampians Music Festival in February next year.
“We’re keen,” he smiles. “We are making a thing of it! We have a pile of friends that are keen to go. It’s one of those things that really appeals to some; a camping festival and it’s got a super nice, lovely friendly vibe to it. Our super nice, lovely friendly campy friends are all amped up, we’ve got a team going down. It’s going to be sweet!
Written by Talia Rinaldo
When & Where: Grampians Music Festival, Halls Gap – February 2 – 4 2018
Visit grampiansmusicfestival.com for the full lineup.