The Naked And Famous is a band from Auckland, New Zealand, that reached worldwide success in 2010 with their single Young Blood which debuted at number one in the NZ chart and has meant that containing their sounds to their homeland has been something of an impossibility.
Thom and Alisa met at music college in 2008 and formed a songwriting partnership that would become the life force of The Naked And Famous. Aaron, a high school acquaintance of Thom’s, was also studying at the same college and soon became a production foil to the duo as they toyed with song and recording ideas after hours in the college studio. These eventually became The Naked And Famous’s first releases, the twin EPs No Light and This Machine.
Forming a live band was secondary to the studio for Thom and Alisa. After the couple’s first tentative steps using backing musicians, they coaxed Aaron out from his role as their live sound engineer to assume suitable knob-twiddling duties onstage - as a sort of electronics overlord - and eventually the perfect rhythm section was found in the shape of another two of their high school mates, Jesse and David. Working furiously throughout 2009 on developing a new live set and dozens of demos, The Naked And Famous embarked on an expansion of their sound, as together they experimented with the epic turns and cinematic moods that define them today.
As early domestic radio love and international cult status began to snowball, a kinship with the widescreen fairytale dance-pop of Empire Of The Sun, MGMT and of course, the ongoing evolutions of LCD Soundsystem, became evident.
Passive Me, Aggressive You, the debut long-player from TNAF came together at scattered small studio locations around Auckland.
On the record we can see the group’s greatest shared and acknowledged influence of Nine Inch Nails.