2charm is Edging Towards A Better Tomorrow
The Australian duo are pushing their self-styled "goon-pop" into a more vivid form on star scum city.
By Samuel Albert
Photos by Casey Garnsey
- Published on
Comprised of “2” and “charm,” and armed with a visual aesthetic as hunky as their lyrics are horny (“ripe nectar of your pits,” anyone?), 2charm—the self-proclaimed originators of the genre “Goon-pop”—have quickly made a name for themselves as the buzziest new irony-laden sex symbols taking the internet by storm.
“We’re not taking it too seriously,” says 2 in a recent conversation with RANGE following the high of their first European tour. “We’ve kind of just been following a feeling and seeing where it takes us,” adds charm, finishing 2’s thoughts with a surprising care and tenderness from a duo with such an ostentatious public persona.
For those unfamiliar with 2charm’s aesthetic, think sweaty, sexually ambiguous, rugby short-sporting, tattoo-covered, and hyper-masculine. The title of their debut album, star scum city, only further personifies this sensibility, inviting listeners into a geography of maximal hedonism to the point of disorientation. “There’s something about the music that’s shimmering, but also a bit grungy,” says 2. “We saw the word ‘scum’ spray painted onto a wall in Melbourne and just knew we’d found the word to summarize what we’d been doing.”
2 and charm adopted their mysterious, unphased 2charm persona somewhere in the intersection of bi-curious rugby player and self-aware hipster doofus. “I think we have people telling us that we’re subversive more than we are attempting to be subversive,” 2 says with a laugh. “Especially with the reappropriation of Australian masc culture.”
2charm’s music lives somewhere the band endearingly refer to as the “2charmiverse,” a land of sonic pleasures they describe as tasting like dirty martinis and smelling like sweat and cum. Their addictively propulsive (and most popular track) “boyfriend” is an insatiable neo-club classic, with the pair auto-tuning their vocals to an unrecognizable pitch, sounding like a cosmic rave fairy commanding you to grind on whatever twunk you can get your hands on in some mystical gay club. The ironic, queer gaze inflected “girls” plays like a climactic bonus track from Ninajirachi’s hyper-pop powerhouse I Love My Computer, “Nina on the beat” an apt repeated lyric given the fellow aussie produced much of star scum city (along with 1tbsp and Simon Lam).
“The idea came to us on a walk in April last year,” says 2, when asked what prompted the project. “They were just songs that we were playing at parties with friends and there was no real specific vision for how it was going to come out, until we were listening to it while on a walk and realized that there’s like a whole album ready to go, basically.” 2 and charm quickly mobilized to come up with a concept as ridiculous as it is realized. “While we were sort of figuring out our aesthetic, we realized that we had some sort of energetic alignment with gooners,” says charm. “Also one day we decided to interview ourselves for the project and made an Instagram-based magazine to present the interview. We called the magazine G00ner P0p Mag and then kind of just kept pushing the Gooner-pop thing from there.”
This isn’t to say 2charm is endorsing the unequivocal devotion to masturbation that gooning refers to – but more so that they’re entire act is committed to relentless pleasure, ecstasy, and arousal in every way possible. When asked about their pattern of consistently having some bush peeking out of their signature NRL shorts during live shows and in almost all of their online content, charm laughs it off. “When we’re looking back at old photos,” he recalls fondly, “you can kind of see this unknowing development of 2charm over the years. The pubes were slowly coming out. The shorts were slowly getting shorter.”
It’s probably only a matter of time before 2charm will break through to the mainstream, their music following in the recent lineage of underground-to-headliner acts like PinkPantheress, Fcuckers, and Frost Children. “We assumed our audience would be horny queer people with a sense of humour and who appreciate good music, of course.” says 2. “I think that’s still pretty much it.”
For now, they’re riding the high of remaining comfortably in an iykyk sub-culture, their music catering most to fans and listeners worldwide that get a kick out of camp masculinity, or perhaps just enjoy seeing two nearly naked men tease physical intimacy while dancing in sync to club music with an edge. “It’s funny to us, the horniness. That some people are taking us very seriously as we’ve started gaining momentum.”
When prompted to imagine what’s on the horizon for the band following their North American tour dates this summer, 2charm all but guaranteed: “the 2charmiverse is going to be expanding soon.” Until then, the kings of goon pop are relishing in the moment. Finding exaltation in the scum, grandeur in the goon.
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