Their first song released since 2022’s critically acclaimed debut album ‘WANT,’ Johnny Hunter’s feverish “Frustration” is an epic, sonically and emotionally charged post-punk anthem; a dramatic upheaval of passion and pain channeling disenchantment and disillusionment with the world into visceral, dramatic, white-hot sound.
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Stream: “Frustration” – Johnny Hunter
‘Frustration’ is a call to overcome my utter distaste at the state of a world in which no one truly believes in anything except what they consume in order to be perceived.
The band behind one of 2022’s best albums has returned with a fire in their hearts and raw thunder in their chests.
We’ve all been at the breaking point – that crossroads from which there’s no return, where the only way out is through, and everything you’ve held within you is seconds from coming out all at once. Tension can be held at bay for only so long, and in “Frustration,” heated emotion and energy pour out in a seismic, cinematic eruption that hits hard and leaves an immediate, lasting mark. Johnny Hunter’s first song in two years is an epic, sonically and emotionally charged post-punk anthem; a dramatic upheaval of passion and pain channeling disenchantment and disillusionment with the world into visceral, white-hot sound.
I’m a porcelain boy
Hanging on the edge of a razor wire
100 ft in the air
Waiting on the wind that’s
Going to tip me over.
I’ve ceased control
I’ve paid my toll
I’m willing to go
Nowhere fast.
The strings on my hands
Are pulling me in every direction.
I have forsaken
My own divine intervention
Out May 8, 2024 via Hell Beach / One Love, “Frustration” is, true to its name, a rip-roaring cathartic release. Johnny Hunter hold nothing back in capturing the storms within, exploding out of the metaphorical gates with a dynamic sound and provocative lyrics that command the room while demanding listeners’ undivided attention.
It’s been two long years since Johnny Hunter’s debut album WANT established them as a singular force in Sydney, Australia’s music scene: “It’s a record of feverish, high-octane energy – one that hits hard from the start, erupting with a youthful, punk-ish fervor that sparks a fire deep down inside,” Atwood Magazine wrote in our Best Albums of 2022 year-end feature, calling the record a “masterpiece” as well as a cinematic triumph of post-punk sound “reckoning with life’s ever-present turmoil and unpredictable turbulence.”
“Unwavering, fierce, and achingly honest, WANT finds the light in the darkness as Johnny Hunter deliver a cathartic and spellbinding journey of heart, passion, and release.”
I’ve paid my toll, I’m willing to go nowhere fast…
“Frustration” is the band’s first single not only since WANT‘s release, but also since they permanently relocated from their longtime hometown of Sydney to London, England – halfway around the world. And while the UK is undoubtedly a very different beast from Australia, one of Johnny Hunter’s first lessons seems to be that deep down, humanity really is all the same – each of us variations on a theme, each society battling with its own set of demons. “Frustration” is universal in its outlook on the world, with frontman Nick Hutt – who plays together with Ben Wilson, Xander Burgess, Nick Cerone, and Gerry Thompson – coming to a fever pitch in the song’s dynamic, electric, and achingly exasperated chorus:
Shut down baby
Oh don’t shut me out
Because we’re hanging on the edge
And I’m never gonna be someone
“‘Frustration’ is a call to overcome my utter distaste at the state of a world in which no one truly believes in anything except what they consume in order to be perceived,” Hutt tells Atwood Magazine. “Both the left and right believe in nothing and use the consumer as a means to profit whilst they simultaneously get f*ed. Referencing ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’ as a means to combat this shit show as the philosophy intends. ‘I’m a porcelain boy hanging on the edge of a razor wire‘ is a complete reference to crossing the bridge and becoming the Ubermensch or Superman that you need in order to block out all of the noise that surrounds you. ‘I’ve ceased control, I’ve paid my toll, I’m willing to go nowhere fast‘ – I will own nothing and be happy, but that doesn’t matter because I am the Ubermensch. ‘Strings on my hands,’ you get the point. Plastic man = NPCs. The world is quite literally a porno. ‘Shut down baby, oh don’t shut me out‘ is fighting the depression of this dystopian hellscape. It’s the call to get out of bed, to get off the SRIs, to step into the light, and not shutdown when things get tough because things have been a whole lot tougher.”
I have forsaken my own divine intervention…
Hyperaware of historical context together with his (and the band’s) own place in this moment in time, Hutt is quick to acknowledge how today’s frustrations are just the latest in a long laundry list of societal frustrations dating back millennia.
“Worth mentioning for the song, every generation has had the idea of ‘hell,’ so to speak,” he adds. “Dante had the vast wood, and Eliot had the millions of dead soldiers walking around in London. I see our hell as being stuck in the middle of millions of apartments where all that we have is the stagnant light of consumer mediums that bleed us dry over and over again for the rest of time… Now watch me be a plastic man hiding in despair in a porno.”
I’m a plastic man
Hiding in despair in a porno
It’s so degrading to be
Living life in fiction
I’m a controlled man
I don’t hear no sound
Grey is white and black is red
Don’t look now, don’t look now
It’s different, it’s different
Turmoil feels good in Johnny Hunter’s hands; they know just how much to twist the knife in order to get the most bang for their buck, making the build-up from verse to chorus as irresistible as it is intoxicating. As Hutt further tells Atwood Magazine, this song was a full family affair, with each member (including the band’s producers) contributing their own parts and additional ideas toward the end result. Hutt may be the band’s frontman, but they are without a doubt a collective – the whole far better than the sum of its parts.
“I worked at a pub that had a piano… I would have about an hour of spare time a day before I had to open, and wrote the verse lyrics then and there. I wrote a few songs on that piano… cheers BVH,” Hutt smiles. “Chorus lyrics came to me when I was running up a massive hill and I was trying not to give up. Xander, our guitarist, came to the studio with the bass line, and I sang over it. Dakota put his rat magic upon it, Mason guitars and Gerry drums, then we sent it off to Jesse from Death From Above 1979 and MSTRKRFT, who turned up the BPM, invited a gospel keys mastermind to help with the chord phrasing in the bridge, and made it into the heater you hear today.”
It’s so degrading to be living life in fiction…
Let whatever causes you angst and agita bleed out with “Frustration.”
Reeling at the boiling point, Johnny Hunter’s first song of the year is an unapologetic, uncompromising heavy-hitter; an intentional and impassioned release of pent-up energies ready to hit us where it hurts, while hopefully alleviating some of that caustic inner tension by the end of its three-minute run. The track serves as the lead single off Johnny Hunter’s forthcoming sophomore album, and finds the group ready to make good on the power, the passion, and the promise of WANT.
Stay tuned for more to come from the newly-minted UK five-piece, and prepare to get lost in the inescapable fervor and churn of “Frustration.”
Shut down baby
Oh don’t shut me out
Because we’re hanging on the edge
And I’m never gonna be someone
The loneliness
The suffering
My eyes see no
See no end to this…
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Stream: “Frustration” – Johnny Hunter
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