PREMIERE: Hey Geronimo Recount Their Failed Attempts At Meeting Courtney Barnett On New Single ‘Mutant’

They say you should never meet your idols. Mostly the warning is out of fear that being face to face with someone you admire will ruin the illusion of them you’ve built up in your head, but, truth be told, there’s not enough emphasis placed on the very real chance that during said meeting you’ll make a total ass of yourself, in the presence of your hero, and thus need to live with the shame of that memory forever. Hey Geronimo learned that lesson the hard way. Twice.

To explain, the band have described their newest single ‘Mutant’, premiering here today, as “an anecdotal journey of personal embarrassment”, as it tells the true story of the song’s co-writer Pete Kilroy’s ill-fated meetings with fellow Aussie muso Courtney Barnett, where each time he morphed into a “babbling, indecipherable” mutant.

“Being a huge fan of the EP, I was very nervous, but figured Dutch courage would get me through it,” Kilroy tells Music Feeds of his first failed Barnett encounter. “She knew who Hey Geronimo was and asked how it was all going – cue the mutant. For the life of me, I couldn’t spit out a coherent answer. Argh, just recalling this is dredging up some repressed memories! The encounter ended with a very polite Courtney Barnett backing away slowly from the babbling mutant. After this massive fail, I swore I’d do better next time… Which I obviously didn’t.”

Swelling with swampy guitars and warped, rollicking percussion, the song continues to charter the mutant’s next appearance.

“I’m actually too ashamed to even repeat the rubbish I dribbled when we met [the next] time,” continues Kilroy. “It wasn’t offensive or anything like that – just borderline non-sensical and cringey. The sort of chat you come up with when you’re a bit drunk and trying too hard to impress someone you like. It didn’t help that I was also trying to make up for my first failed encounter. As our cab pulled away from the venue, I turned to Bingers (our bass player) and it dawned on me, ‘Oh my God, it happened again!’”

In the spirit of making that perennial lemonade though, Hey Geronimo have turned those mortifying memories into a certified indie-rock banger that will feature on the band’s sophomore album, due out later this year.

Give it a spin here now.

Must Read