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[title]‘Ouch!’ cries Confidence Man frontman Sugar Bones, lying splayed out on a mock hospital bed. His fellow frontwoman Janet Planet is looming over him, digging the heel of her platform stiletto into his chest. With prosthetic makeup giving her an unearthly over-pronounced brow bone and wearing her second head-to-toe latex look of the day, she looks like a majestic, polka-dotted alien, overpowering her captor, the evil Dr Sugarbones.
Cosplaying alien autopsies probably wouldn’t be on most people’s bingo card for 2024, but for the inimitable band du jour Confidence Man, this is just another Friday afternoon: you’d be just as likely to see them riding naked in helicopters over London or performing stage skits involving fake blood. The Australian four-piece embody the phrase ‘punk energy’ – and, according to the silver-haired, softly spoken Sugar Bones, anything goes so long as it’s ‘bizarre and sexy at the same time’. It’s an attitude that trickles through to their poppy rave sound, which has been compared to everyone from Donna Summer to LCD Soundsystem.
Confidence Man (completed by the mask-clad ‘veilboys’, producer Reggie Goodchild and drummer Clarence McGuffie) formed in 2016: all four members were living together in a musicians’ house share in Brisbane, playing in separate bands. At first, they didn’t have much direction. ‘The purpose was just having fun,’ says Janet Planet. It took a while for their sound, and live act, to catch on. ‘At the start, people in Australia were just genuinely confused,’ says Planet, who stridently sings about having a boyfriend who doesn’t satisfy her and being the coolest girl at a party on their first album.
That audience, it turns out, was in the UK: in 2022, after touring their debut album ‘Confident Music For Confident People’ for four years, the band took their live show to the Park Stage at Glastonbury. Thanks to their wacky costumes, earworm tunes and mad dance routines (a cross between manic gyrating, kung-fu and swing), backed with visuals of pigeons and badgers, their performance became the talk of the festival and its BBC broadcast gained them a swathe of new fans. Fast forward to today, and they have more than a million monthly Spotify listeners, have performed to 70,000 people on Glastonbury’s Other Stage, sold out two dates at the O2 Academy in Brixton, collaborated with Kylie Minogue and can count Noel Gallagher as one their fans. So how did their brand of peculiar, outrageous hedonism become so popular?
London calling
When Time Out meets Confidence Man, the band is preparing for the release of its third album 3AM (LA LA LA) – a bouncy, club-ready record that will be released on October 18 – and their biggest tour to date. ‘For the Brixton [O2] show[s], we’re pulling out all the stops,’ Planet says, alluding to guest performances, a set designed by Madonna collaborator Rob Sinclair and routines that will include ‘flying elements’. ‘We’re going to be giving Raygun a run for her money,’ she jokes.
The club culture is so good in London – the new album is 10 BPM faster than the last
It’s a Friday evening in September, and we’re chatting to Sugar Bones and Janet Planet at a pub on the Isle of Dogs. Bones orders a lager, for Planet, it’s an Aperol spritz (she’s more into cocktail bars than pubs – her current favourite bar is 392 on Kingsland Road). Although the band have only lived in the UK capital since 2023, the pair give off the vibe of seasoned east Londoners. Planet wears a bedazzled baby tee with a utilitarian skirt; Bones dons a stripey green sports jersey with a man bag slung over the top (vital for his tobacco stash). But despite their so-fashionable-it’s-intimidating appearances, they definitely don’t take themselves too seriously. ‘I’m hibernating tonight,’ Planet says. ‘I’ve been partying a lot lately. I’m literally leaving London to get away from our friends. I need to try and be healthy and get out.’
‘You’re chugging through that drink,’ chides Bones.
Since becoming adopted Londoners, Confidence Man has gained a reputation as being a band of party people. It’s a role they don’t take lightly. ‘We’ve immersed ourselves in the queer club scene,’ says Planet, who regularly goes to nights like Adonis and has fond memories of sharing the green room at Phonox with 15 drag queens (‘there was a lot of hair’). Most of these hazy nights end with them dragging people back to their flat in Dalston, where Bones, Planet and Goodchild all live together, to listen to demos into the not-so-early hours of the morning. ‘People either come to us to party, or they avoid us,’ says Planet.
Why the UK? As well as being closer to producers they want to work with (they’ve collaborated with Daniel Avery and met heroes like Orbital since being here), the band wanted to live in the culture they’ve been inspired by. ‘There are no real warehouse raves in Australia, so experiencing things like Manchester’s Warehouse Project was big. We’d never seen anything like that before.’ A typical Confidence Man song will have a an infectious electronic beat, bacchanalian lyrics about parties, drugs and money, and a ‘don’t give a fuck’ delivery from Planet and Bones. Drawing on everything from ’90s breakbeat, to Balearic, their catchy dance music sounds distinctly contemporary, but it knows where it comes from. ‘A lot of our influences are ’90s rave and UK sounds,’ says Planet. ‘Being around that has given us a lot more context to the music.’ It’s impossible not to hear London’s impact on the new record, which even features shout-outs to Hackney’s Mare Street and Ridley Road.
All play and no work
All of these nights out haven’t been in vain, though: they’ve acted as a kind of field work for their upcoming album, which Bones says has been influenced by the ‘high energy nature of London’. ‘The club culture is just so good here, so the whole album is 10 BPM faster than the last one,’ he says.
In fact, their ‘magic formula’ when creating the record was to ‘only write drunk’. They made the entire album during late-night ‘cooked’ sessions: beginning in the evening and powering through in a substance-fuelled sesh until at least 10am the next day. ‘We would go out and have drinks and then go to the studio until eight o’clock in the morning, then go back to our house to work on lyrics around the coffee table,’ Planet recalls. ‘One time it was 10am and we hadn’t slept, and we were at home going over and over and over some lyrics. Someone from downstairs was just like, “Shut the fuck up!” Our neighbours weren’t happy.’
Is this the most efficient way to write music? Maybe not. ‘One out of 50 lyrics will be good,’ says Bones. ‘It’s still worth it for the one good line,’ adds Planet. ‘When you write things in that state you say things you wouldn’t usually say.’ Most of the really out-there stuff, though, like a hook about aliens flying to Mars, didn’t make the cut. But parts that remain include a ‘massive drunk rant’ from Planet, including original vocals of her ‘screaming around the kitchen table’, in the opening of ‘No Idea’.
For a group of adults who spend this much time together, living, working and going out, it begs the question: do they ever get sick of each other? ‘You haven’t been annoying me at all,’ jokes Planet to Bones. Despite having to take a breather after a particularly debaucherous Glastonbury that involved little sleep, the band say they love spending every waking moment together. ‘We’re all co-dependent,’ says Planet. ‘We do everything together, and we’re very much all in love.’
There’s a very fine line between stupid and avant garde
As for their housemate dynamic? ‘I’m the passive aggressive one, Reggie’s the messy one, and Sugar makes the whole house smell like weed,’ she says. And this dynamic plays out in their work, too. During our conversation it’s clear that Planet is the driving force behind the outfit. ‘I’m the boss,’ she says instantly, after I ask who wears the trousers. ‘And I’m the assistant pop star,’ chimes in Bones, who graciously accepts his position as Planet’s sidekick. They joke that Reggie is like the ‘absent father’: detached and relentlessly laidback.
Planet is also the brains behind some of the band’s most iconic moments: it was her idea, for example, to sport a pair of conical light-up boobs – think Madonna meets the Science Museum – that are beloved by their fans; it’s not unusual to see punters sporting their own DIY versions of the costumes at Con Man gigs. ‘It took six months to build them,’ she says. ‘And we can never get rid of them. I keep asking if we can retire the lazer boobs, but I think if I did, people – particularly the gays – would revolt.’ Planet was the one who pushed for her and Bones to do synchronised dancing: he took some convincing at first, but these moves are now a given part of a Con Man live show, though they can sometimes lead to disastrous results. ‘We’ve learned the importance of a warm up,’ says Planet. ‘I’ve fallen off the stage and torn many different muscles,’ Bones says. ‘Years ago at Mighty Hoopla I ripped my shoulder out.’
‘He was clambering back on stage, covered in blood. But still had his sunglasses on, holding a bottle of champagne,’ recalls Planet. Inspired by the live shows of artists like Grace Jones, the KLF and Soulwax, the pair certainly don’t hold back: their choreographed routines involve pouring fizz over each other, Bones ripping his clothes off multiple times and covering himself in fake blood. Once, a fan asked Planet to spit in his mouth, and she obliged. Sometimes though, the creative ideas don’t fly. ‘Sugar has this idea of having a pantomime horse,’ Planet says. ‘That’s never gonna happen. There’s a very fine line between stupid and avant garde.’
Breaking the rules
Despite their dedication to a good sesh, Confidence Man are more than just club rats. They may be hedonistic, but their act and image is expertly curated. Their social media pages tow the line between irritatingly cool – photos of fashion week and chic holidays – and ultimate relatable candour – ugly selfies and videos of rehearsals going wrong.
If we’re broadcast on TV, certain demographics get absolutely offended
‘It’s our job to push the boundaries of pop music,’ says Planet, who says she enjoys ‘confusing people’. The running joke is that nobody knows whether Bones and her are siblings or a couple: they stoke the flames of this rumour by frequently locking lips and sharing the photos on Instagram, which always attract a slew of comments alluding to incest. When I ask, they giggle and swear they are brother and sister. But still, I can’t tell if they’re messing. For a second Planet’s mask slips. ‘I’m from, no we’re from, near Brisbane,’ she says, when I ask about their home life as siblings.
Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter, because all this fuckery is the essence of what the band is about. ‘We tend to shock people,’ says Bones. ‘If we’re broadcast on TV, certain demographics get absolutely offended.’ Planet adds: ‘The whole intention of our live show is to make something we would want to see. People think we want to press buttons, but it’s more that we want to press our own buttons.’
Con Man’s raucous, substance-tinged debauchery has come at a good time, when pop music seems to be going through a dancefloor re-awakening: just look at the success of Charli XCX’s brat and the popularity of artists like Shygirl, Romy and PinkPantheress. Here is a band with a sound that is rooted in having fun and being silly, with a uniquely wild live show to go with it. ‘If certain people are offended by something, we’ll just do more of it,’ says Bones. ‘Feeling misunderstood by the right people is really satisfying.’
Confidence Man’s ‘3AM (LA LA LA)’ is out on October 18.
Photographer: Jess Hand @jesshandphotography
Design Director: Bryan Mayes @bryanmayesdotcom
Senior Designer: Jamie Inglis @818fpv
Photo Editor: Laura Gallant @lauramgallant
Video: Mashana Malowa
Stylist: Lucy James @juicylames represented by @W_artist_mgmt
Styling assistant: Colleen Finnerty @colleen_finnerty
Grooming: Charles Stanley @cmstanley13
Make Up and SFX: Saphron Morgan @saph.hmua or @saph.art
LED Headpiece: Dominic Elvin @dominicelvin
In look one Janet Planet wears @C_ritter_ dress and @the223.agency dress, @jivomir.domoustchiev belt and bra, jewellery by @c_solis_, @deadlotus.couture stockings and shoes by @maximilianraynor. Sugar Bones wears @littlegrapepip coat, @deadlotus.couture shirts and trousers, shoes by @rokeratelier and @avenuecommunications, sunglasses by @gel_p_s and gloves by @deadlotus.couture.
In look two Janet wears @cameronhancock.studio chest plate and cuffs, @milo.maria trousers. Sugar wears overalls by @littlegrapepip.
In look three Janet Planet wears @moniquefei bodysuit, gloves by @deadlotus.couture, @elissapoppy and @the223.agency stockings and necklace by @886.official. Sugar Bones wears chest plate and jacket by @houseofautonomy, @_raphaelxie_ trousers, and @c_solis_ jewellery.