The New Zealand indie-rock’s latest release comes as they ride a booming wave of popularity.
While remaining with the stripped-back approach to their discography, NO CIGAR’s “Best Behaviour” instead uses the sound to reflect on the anxiety of meeting a partner’s parents for the first time.
“Meeting the parents will always be a tense moment, laced with trepidation,” the band’s vocalist Willy Ferrier said. “To be on one’s best behaviour is the expectation.”
“To be nervous is understandable. To be perfect is unlikely. The rawness and fragility reflect everyone’s mind-state in such moments. Being an artist can’t even prepare you for moments like these.”
Having spent years on the back-burner, the track finally resonated with the band during a recent songwriting session in Chantilly, a quaint French town just north of Paris.
“Willy had brought it to us a while back, but with a dollop of Chantilly cream, it was ready to serve,” the band said.
The town played such a crucial role the band’s next phase that it became the title of their only single to be released last year, before being followed by “Problem” and “Best Behaviour”.
“Having flown halfway around the world to play shows and write new music, there was a very real pressure to produce something worthy of the beautiful town we were in,” the band revealed after the release of the single.
“That pressure slowly began to build. We’d hit a bit of a wall creatively, or so it seemed, until we decided to clear the heads, and venture out into the picturesque autumnal embankments of the river that meandered through Chantilly. Upon returning to our instruments, the valve was released.”
Their latest drops have followed a meteoric rise for NO CIGAR since forming in 2019 and culminated in their 2023 album The Great Escape which has remained in the top 20 on the Aotearoa albums chart for 65 weeks.
NO CIGAR’s “Best Behaviour” is out now.
