Julia Jacklin’s Phantastic Ferniture Make Good on “Bad Timing” with Playful New Single, Video

Sydney band Phantastic Ferniture have released their latest single, “Bad Timing,” off their forthcoming album Phantastic Ferniture, out July 27 on Polyvinyl. “Bad Timing” joins “Gap Year” and “Fuckin ‘n’ Rollin” among advance tracks from the group’s anticipated debut.

Made up of Julia Jacklin, Elizabeth Hughes and Ryan K. Brennan, the garage-pop group is more than fern puns—it’s liberation from themselves and the expected. Away from their solo projects, the bandmates come together as a more spontaneous collective. Each also took on a role that they had never done before; for instance, Hughes had never been a lead guitarist—the aim was not for technical perfection, but for passion to outweigh any need for it.

On “Bad Timing,” the bright, swaying sound lightens up the lyrics: “Maybe it’s not the time, maybe we were never meant to be,” Jacklin sings. The video stays in step with the lighter side of the song, depicting a playful “day in the life” of fern people—that is, people with potted ferns as heads—an image that also appears on the record’s cover (minus the pots). Directed by the band and Nick Mckk, the video features friends recruited to play ferns: “It turned out to be quite a painful process but probably good for our dwindling musician specific fitness levels,” Jacklin said. “I think all our arms were aching for about a week after.”

Quite a turn from the folkier sound Jacklin tunes into on her solo material, Phantastic Ferniture is a no-constraints play place where the music makes you want to dance, whether you have a fern head or not.

You can preorder the band’s forthcoming record here. Listen to “Bad Timing” below and keep scrolling for the band’s two previous singles, plus Jacklin’s 2017 Daytrotter Session.