Ball Park Music

Over 15 years into their career, everything Ball Park Music does these days feels like a victory lap. The Brisbane indie darlings have long established their status as one of Australia’s most revered and endearing bands – with five of their seven albums having debuted in the ARIA top five, four of their songs having gone platinum and no less than a dozen Hottest 100 placements to their name. Most bands in that position would be happy to coast out their days on heyday nostalgia alone, but if it wasn’t already clear:

Ball Park Music are not most bands.

 

Imaginary Friend:

"Tell me, do you need a new companion?" What could be better than an Imaginary Friend – in this case, the musical project of singer-songwriter Max Schäffer from Mainz. Whether playful and carefree or melancholic and lost in thought, all of Imaginary Friend's songs carry a comforting, airy lightness that oscillates somewhere between HER's, Phoebe Bridgers, and New Wave nostalgia à la The Cure. Jazzy chords meet drum machine, dreamy 60s melodies encounter contemporary indie quirkiness.

Live as a four-piece band, the intimate songwriting aesthetic transforms into something that invites both head-nodding and contemplation – from dreamy-euphoric tracks to melancholic, folksy numbers. In his lyrics, Max tells tales of the "twentysomething" zeitgeist, sometimes with a wink: from longing for unlived dreams through the arduous process of growing up to the great disorientation – Imaginary Friend speaks for a (wh)Y generation seeking the "because." Indie rock for overthinkers, surf pop for people who've never stood on a surfboard, New Wave for those too young for it. The perfect antidote to quarter-life crisis – or at least a very melodic soundtrack to it.