Full Flower Moon Band turn a song about partying hard into a deeper reflection on forgiveness, friendship and the people who keep independent music alive, as Kate Dillon and her Brisbane band prepare for career-defining support slots with Foo Fighters and Powderfinger.
Full Flower Moon Band have released their new single ‘Party Hard’, the second track from their forthcoming fourth album After Dark, as the Brisbane band prepare for major Australian support appearances with Foo Fighters in November and Powderfinger in 2027.
Fronted by Kate ‘Babyshakes’ Dillon, Full Flower Moon Band have built a reputation as one of Brisbane’s most distinctive rock acts. The release of ‘Party Hard’ introduces another side of the band, with a song that uses the language of rock and roll celebration to explore something considerably more personal.
The single is released through Impressed Recordings ahead of After Dark, scheduled for Friday 26 February. The album follows 2024’s Megaflower, which debuted at number one on the ARIA Australian Album Chart, sold out its first vinyl pressing within a week and won Album of the Year at The Triffid.
‘Party Hard’ started with a deceptively simple observation: you cannot claim to have partied hard if the experience was easy. Dillon initially imagined a straightforward rock and roll song, but the idea developed into a reflection on the people who continue to support each other through the difficult realities of making music.
The song speaks to a community where the rewards are not always financial, the recognition is not guaranteed and the work can be emotionally demanding. Its central message is about the value of staying connected when circumstances become difficult.
“‘Let’s get forgiven’ is my way of saying: ask for forgiveness, not permission, to live the life you want,” Dillon says. “That doesn’t make the hard parts disappear. It means reaching for someone’s hand and continuing together.”
That sentiment provides an important introduction to After Dark, an album written during a particularly challenging period in Dillon’s life.
Following the award of the Grant McLennan Fellowship, Dillon travelled to New York, where she wrote the album over a single month. The fellowship, awarded annually to an Australian songwriter, gave her an opportunity to step outside the Brisbane music environment and experience a different creative landscape.
She had hoped that being in New York would reignite the excitement of discovering a much larger music community. Instead, the experience became increasingly confronting.
“I was expecting to be excited, then the excitement started falling away,” she says. “I was photosynthesising the quality of light I was getting at the time into something that was not feeding me in the way I expected. So it turned into a much darker lived experience.”
Dillon was staying in a Lower East Side apartment overlooking a graveyard. From there she witnessed a city moving through extraordinary political and social moments, including protests by Columbia University students and Donald Trump’s motorcade travelling towards court.
Those experiences were not necessarily the subject of the album, but they became part of the emotional environment in which it was written.
“I felt as though I was the only one who blinked,” Dillon says. “The rest of the city seemed to absorb all of this and remain the so-called ‘city of dreams’ for everyone else.”
After Dark also represents a significant change in the way Full Flower Moon Band approach recording. For the first time in five years, Dillon made a record without her regular band members. The material had become so personal that she initially felt it needed to be developed independently.
The writing process was slow, but recording moved quickly. Dillon also made the decision to relinquish some of the creative control she had previously maintained, bringing Melbourne producer and drummer Jim Rindfleish into the project from its earliest stages.
“I wasn’t just recording, I was learning a new way of working,” she says. “Jim stepped into a fragile body of work and a mood that I was still living inside of and masterfully steered it to shore. I was seen with new eyes and felt room to grow.”
Dillon regards After Dark as her most personal and transformative album to date. It is a record that leaves questions unanswered rather than attempting to provide a neat conclusion to the experiences behind it.
“I would say that I survived this album,” she says. “I didn’t make it from a triumphant place, but I made it.”
The album’s 12 tracks move through that emotional landscape, with ‘Party Hard’ sitting alongside songs including ‘Almost Dead’, ‘Crossroads’, ‘Endless Summer’, ‘Further Down’ and ‘On The Right Path’.
The album tracklisting is:
Almost Dead
After Dark
Outro 1 (Alone With It)
Crossroads
Endless Summer
Further Down
Party Hard
Inst #64
Wake Up
Anywhere
Outro 2
On The Right Path
The release of After Dark comes as Full Flower Moon Band move into the biggest live opportunities of their career.
The band will support Foo Fighters in Brisbane and Townsville this November, placing them on the bill with one of the world’s most successful rock bands. In late 2027, they will join Powderfinger for shows at Hobart’s Cornelian Bay Oval and Brisbane Showgrounds.
The Powderfinger appearances are particularly significant for a Brisbane band whose own development has been shaped by the city’s independent music community. Both support opportunities will expose Full Flower Moon Band to audiences considerably larger than those they have previously played to.
Full Flower Moon Band have already attracted international attention. Iggy Pop has played their music on BBC Radio 6 Music, while their work has received coverage from NME, Triple J and Rolling Stone Australia. Their songs have also appeared in Netflix productions Heartbreak High and The Runarounds.
Among their supporters are Jack Black, Fred Durst and Noel Fielding, an eclectic collection of admirers reflecting the band’s appeal beyond the Australian independent music circuit.
For Dillon, the next chapter brings the opportunity to take a deeply personal collection of songs into a very public environment. After Dark was created during a period of uncertainty, but its release coincides with a substantial expansion of the band’s audience.
‘Party Hard’ is therefore an appropriate introduction. Beneath its title is a song about endurance, forgiveness and the people who keep turning up for each other, even when the rewards are difficult to see.
Full Flower Moon Band’s After Dark is released Friday 26 February 2027 through Impressed Recordings.
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