B-Side Guys

Melbourne four-piece COMEDY opens their debut single “L.A. Perfume” with an invitation and a warning: come back, but understand that everything’s burning. Singer Francis Glass built the track from a LA stopover experience, sensing something heavy in the air—everyone sick from living lives structured by apocalyptic insecurity while still drowning in desire. That contradiction becomes the song’s engine: how do you pursue romance when the sky’s falling?

The band cherry-picks from six decades of rock history—60s garage, glam strut, new wave angularity, punk attitude—without sounding like cosplay. Guitarist Andy Campbell wanted something “strident, confident, large and a bit dangerous,” and the production delivers that scale. This is music made to feel things you don’t access in daily life, to inhabit someone bolder than whoever you are when the song ends.

Glass sings about broken boulevards and West Coast burning, fleeting French phrases (“Retournez-moi / Dans le jardin”) adding linguistic dislocation to geographical ones. The chorus acknowledges the weight directly: “It’s so heavy / That’s the price of / Living life under these falling skies.” But instead of retreating from that heaviness, the track leans into desperate connection—”You can’t be alone tonight / It’s coming down / I can’t be alone tonight / I’m coming down.” Loneliness becomes unbearable when disaster looms, even if coupling offers no actual safety.

The band formed when Campbell (AM Reruns, Nat Vazer) and Glass started swapping songs remotely in 2024, eventually recruiting Nick McGregor on drums and Citizen Zane on bass. Recorded at The Rat Shack with Rob Muinos, “L.A. Perfume” announces COMEDY as students of rock history who understand that studying the past means applying it to present anxieties. Apocalyptic insecurity requires apocalyptic romance. Why wait for better circumstances when circumstances won’t improve?