Fake Fruit Have a Puzzle to Solve

If you go to a Fake Fruit show, you might have the pleasure of being awestruck by Hannah “Ham” D’Amato as she solves a Rubik’s cube on stage. “It’s this weird gimmick,” she laughs. “I learned how to do it in the back of the van just because there’s so much time to kill.” The California native loves puzzles so much that the Rubik’s feat has become a part of Fake Fruit’s nightly show. “My husband said I should try to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for that,” D’Amato jokes. “But there are so many criteria to qualify. It would be like taking on another part-time job.” For her, it’s another way to connect while on stage and further break down the artist-to-fan barrier. “It’s cool when really dorky kids come to the show and ask, ‘Were you using the seatbelt method?’”

The produce-adjacent trio have come a long way from their origins, starting in New York in 2016 and then finding a home in Vancouver, B.C., before landing in Oakland and blossoming into the Fake Fruit of 2024. D’Amato, lead guitarist Alex Post and drummer Miles MacDiarmid began working on their self-titled debut in 2019, fighting through a pandemic to finish it before releasing it in 2021. Now, three years later, after going through transformative breakups, an alopecia diagnosis and confronting the existential dread of getting older, Fake Fruit have conjured a perfect appetite for sardonic, post-punk mayhem on their sophomore record Mucho Mistrust.

Even though D’Amato now fronts a snarling, noisier outfit, her roots remain in classical music. She grew up playing viola through her elementary school’s music program—though her heart was really yearning for the cello. She laughs as she recalls her parents making her pick the viola since they already had one from when her older sister went through the same program. “I was in an orchestra as young as fourth grade, and I absolutely loved it,” she says. “My most profound early music memory was playing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ in the orchestra for a recital, and it was so beautiful and I felt so surrounded by it—like floating above my body—that I teared up so much so I could not see the sheet music anymore because I was so moved.”

Though D’Amato’s elementary school program was far more robust than mine, I recalled the time I had to learn the recorder for music class, which sparked a memory that MacDiarmid told her once: “He did choir and recorders, and when he was practicing for a big recital, something was up with his stomach, or he was nervous and didn’t want to say anything. He was fully playing the recorder and puked into it,” she snickers. Throughout our conversation, D’Amato continues to make jokes and tell funny stories that truly match the humorous ethos of Fake Fruit. She talks about the karaoke machine her parents bought that was a ripoff and the band’s comically disastrous last tour, where their van broke down in the desert. D’Amato says it all with a smile, the same spirit she brings to her songwriting. “There’s that [lyric]—‘Tears roll to my chin from my eyes, can’t keep those damn things dry these days’—it’s just how I cope with everything. Maybe it’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but it’s like that meme that says, ‘Tears in my eyes. Time to make a joke.’”

Slick jokes and sarcasm aren’t the only things hidden amongst the lyrics on Mucho Mistrust. The album’s title references the opening verse of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and, admittedly, I have listened to that song over a hundred times and had no idea what Harry was saying. “It’s for the real music dorks,” D’Amato says of the reference. “I just latched on to that phrase and held it in my pocket for so long, because we knew the first record had to be self-titled. I kept it in the bio of our Instagram before the record was even started as a placeholder. If some other band named a record after that line, I wanted to have proof that I wanted to use that for a long time. Also, Debbie Harry is just like a Rock God—such a legend, so fucking cool.”

They found that same humor in producer Jack Shirley, who’s produced all of Jeff Rosenstock’s albums. Their collaboration with Shirley fell into place at the very last minute when previous plans to record Mucho Mistrust fell through. D’Amato reached out on a whim, and Shirley found a way to make it work. Their connection was kismet. “He’s so funny. He has a sticker that says ‘Overdrive is everything,’” she laughs. “He sent me this text once that said, ‘“Cause of Death” is a banger,’ but he spelled banger wrong. It was like B-A-N-G-O-R. ‘“Cause of Death” is a Bangor.’ There’s all kinds of sides to Jack Shirley.” Shirley’s influence brought more sonorous energy to Fake Fruit’s music, with tracks like “Gotta Meet You” packed to the brim with cowbell and saxophone and “Cause Of Death” maintaining the dynamic energy even as a laid-back rocker.

Fake Fruit’s second album is a more collaborative effort than their debut, which D’Amato mainly wrote on her own. Fake Fruit was written and recorded through the height of the pandemic, so it was primarily just D’Amato working on the album as a means of grappling with isolation. Their debut was stripped down production-wise because of the circumstances, but this time around, they truly took advantage of Shirley’s love for all things loud and cranked out unique beats and quirky rhythms that mesh into the vibrant array of music that is Mucho Mistrust. “I almost prefer to write in the room with the whole band, just to realize the thing so much sooner,” D’Amato explains. “I’m just interested in all that collaborative energy, and I feel like we know what kind of influences we’re going for, and we’ve honed in on what the Fake Fruit sound is. I think it’s so much better when we work on stuff together.”

Mucho Mistrust is a frenzy of helter-skelter rhythms, jangling melodies and an air of knowing introspection. Between the artful quips and self-deprecation are healthy suspicions of global catastrophe and capitalistic terror, perfecting a balance of anxiety that hit home for the trio. D’Amato and her bandmates struggle to stay afloat while following their passions as musicians, with all three members trying to hold down jobs in-between tours. “Basically, it’s psychological warfare,” D’Amato says, chuckling dryly. In the album’s title track, D’Amato expresses the overwhelming madness of the conflicting messages of the fleeting foundation of capitalism with a list of contrary signs like “Do not enter, pass with care” or “Construction, Liquidation.” Mucho Mistrust is all about taking the absurdity of commercialism and laughing in its face as a way to cope with the system we are all held captive in. Fake Fruit confront existentialism with style and sharp teeth, and that is what makes them such a kinetic band.

Another piece of what makes Fake Fruit so sweet is D’Amato’s ability to blend her identity as a Chicana into the band’s personality. The post-punk genre was coined predominately by bands with male leads, especially white male leads like Ian Curist of Joy Division and Colin Newman of Wire. Even the few iconic female-led post-punk bands, like Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Raincoats, were led by white women. So, for D’Amato, being a representation of young women of color that she didn’t have coming up in the scene is irreplaceable. “It grows in meaning when people talk to me after shows and tell me they’ve never seen somebody who looks like them doing this,” she says. “There was a girl I met after a set, and she was wearing a Fake Fruit shirt, a tote bag and a hat. She said, ‘I had no idea who you guys were, and now you’re my favorite band.’ And we talked about what that Chicana representation means to her. I’m working on becoming fluent in Spanish, because my folks didn’t speak Spanish in the household growing up. I want to feel like I can speak Spanish with the kind of abandon I do when I have a lot of Mezcal. I just want to express myself in Spanish as well as I do in English.”

After spending so much time strengthening her craft and perfecting Fake Fruit’s sound, D’Amato has gained as much confidence in her music as she has in herself. She wishes she could tell her younger self to stop listening to insecure boyfriends who held her back for so long. D’Amato says it best in “Más O Menos” when she shouts, “After I lost all my sense of self / I let myself get absorbed into you.” “I got held back for so long, caring what the people supposed to care about me the most thought, but now I’m married to an incredible, supportive partner,” she says. “I dated many musicians who could not cope with my success. Pushing this narrative of ‘I was disappointed, and I don’t want that to happen to you.’ When you’re young you think, ‘Oh, okay. They care about me and don’t want me to feel let down.’ But that totally clips your wings. It took me so long to realize that it’s not naive to want the things that I want or to expect all the hard work I’m putting in to pay off eventually. I just really care.” Finding self-confidence in a world built to tear you down isn’t easy, but Fake Fruit are ready to take on the challenge with a glorious, shit-eating grin.

Olivia Abercrombie is Paste‘s Associate Music Editor, reporting from Austin, Texas. To hear her chat more about her favorite music, gush about old horror films, or rant about Survivor, you can follow her on Twitter @o_abercrombie.