Melbourne's Virgin Mary Disco offer super catchy, jangly new wave single, 'For Free'

Melbourne’s post-punk/new wave/garage rock outfit, Virgin Mary Disco are taking no prisoners in 2023, having already released two singles, and now the relatively fresh crew continue the onslaught with the super-bouncy ‘For Free’.

Coming in at well under 3 minutes, the track stays true to the band’s ethos of delivering short, sharp, punchy nuggets of musical gold. Steady verse, powerful chorus, strong guitars, propulsive drums, and crowd-heaving energy; all boxes are well and truly ticked.

The track was recorded at Head Gap in Preston with Rohan Sforcina (Little Ugly Girls, Mildlife, Rolling Blackouts C.F.)

‘For Free’ is CBGBs-fuelled new wave for the modern age, with its surf-tinged guitar bends, super-close drums, bouncy metallic bass, and vocals heavy on the slap-back. Think of New York punks making friends with the nightclub DJs, and meeting in the middle for scrappy, jangly, catchy lo-fi dance rock that flips the middle finger at capitalism.

It’s been a massive year for the band who released their debut single only 8 months ago. Their previous two singles (‘Modern Man’ and ‘Automation’) have been garnering praise from media and fans alike, with ongoing support from radio such as PBS, 4ZZZ and 2XX, and sold out single launches. In more recent news, the band have also just announced that they will be supporting Amyl and The Sniffers at their Frankston show on November 25th.

Speaking on the track, vocalist Spencer Morris explains that ‘For Free’ is about the experience of employment in the modern workplace, and capitalism.

“The lyrics for ‘For Free’ came from my own mishearing of the song ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ by Talking Heads. When Byrne sings ‘Business and pleasure, lie right to your face’, I always heard ‘Business IS pleasure’, a contradiction I could identify with, and the lyrics grew from there. Many companies today present themselves as supportive, community environments (some may even be genuine in their pursuit), but at the end of the day they continue to thrive on a system based on the extraction of cheap resources and cheap labour, leaving us to pay the true cost of their greed.”

Continuing the discussion on ‘For Free’s musical evolution, guitarist Duncan Callaghan says the track was spawned from a spontaneous jam at practice several years ago. 

“(Bassist) Liam had a bass line, and I came up with the guitar part and chorus pretty instinctively. The vague intention I had with the guitar part was somewhere between surf rock and The Smiths. During recording I told (producer) Rohan my original intent of sounding surf rock and he lent me his vintage 60s fender jaguar, a staple of surf rock classics, to give the guitar solo a distinctly dry and tremolo heavy tone. I think there is still some Smiths influence in the funky bass line and clean tone and it has a very danceable feel.”

Virgin Mary Disco continue their run of super punchy new-wave meets garage rock singles, with ‘For Free’ now streaming on all digital platforms.