Watch This: Go Fever Spirals in an Australian Pub for New Video

Go Fever songwriter/vocalist Acey Monaro nails the animal act of intoxication in the cutting opening lines of raucous latest single “NYE15.”

“Kings and queens of small town scenes
Beasts shitting in their waterholes
Hugs and kisses are hits and misses
Lipstick smears from sloppy messes”

Last year during COVID-19 shutdown of live music in Austin, the singer and husband/bassist Ben Burdick retreated to the former’s hometown of Maitland in Australia. During her months at home, Monaro teamed up with director Matthew Walker and producer Clare Lewis, who drove up from Sydney for the day of filming. (They connected over the duo’s recently-premiered documentary I’m Wanita, about a renegade country singer and close family friend of Monaro.)

Quizzically appropriate for the locale, characters in turtlenecks, thick gold chains, and kangaroo masks escort the Australian Austin transplant in the opening scene of the new “NYE15” video.

“The house I grew up in is right on that bend in the river that we're walking along with the bikes,” writes Monaro. “The pub where the [rest of] video is filmed, the Metro – we chose it because it's a beautiful art deco joint plus it's always dead in there and we could easily take it over. I got my family and friends to come, threw some money over the bar, ordered pizzas, and told everyone to act ostentatiously, which they're naturally quite good at anyway.”

Beer bottles, barroom gregariousness, gambling, and general colorful chaos ensue over a hypnotic rock chorus. The propulsive anti-party song joins the group’s sophomore Velvet Fist, due October 8 on Austin’s Nine Mile Records and recorded at local Radio Milk Studios with in-house producer Jim Vollentine. Back in Austin, Go Fever plays their first show in over a year, Sept. 11 at Mohawk, with White Denim and Being Dead.

“The song is about being disillusioned with boring, toxic drinking culture (so prevalent in Austin and Australia), the bar scene in general and especially the cliques and egos within it,” adds Monaro. “I wrote the stream-of-consciousness invective at 3am after a particularly disenchanting New Year's Eve. What I wrote in those first hours of 2016 is pretty much what you hear on the record.

“It's by far the gnarliest song on the new album. The next single is very smooshy.”

View the snarl and spaghetti below: