Marty remembers a review of an early album that described them as “good, but they sound just like everybody else.” That bothered him. It was a tough season, in which Fern and Marty were “subject to whatever they send you.” It was tough for them as partners, to find tracks they could agree on. “I think in pleasing the label and trying pleasing everyone else, we weren’t pleasing who we wanted to,” he says. He goes back to the early days of Social Club Misfits, describing the complications of being young artists trying to keep their label happy. “Let me start at the beginning,” Marty says. In their latest and most personal album yet, Feared By Hell, Social Club Misfits show how consistency pays off in excellence. You can hear the distinctions on their music, where Fern and Marty’s back and forth is a study in dueling flows, charting a path through some wild sonic experiences. In conversation, Fern is thoughtful, a little quieter. “That’s true of a lot of things,” he muses. “If you really want it and you know the outcome you’re trying to achieve, you have to be consistent.” “It’s consistency, you know what I’m saying? Real consistency,” he says. He doesn’t cheat - refusing to waffle even after he caught his wife sneaking bites of their son’s pizza - because with him, it’s all or nothing. “I’m doing way more in the kitchen than I’ve ever really done, for real,” he says. “It’s been a real lifestyle change,” he says. When he calls from his home in Florida, he’s eating homemade butternut squash fritters. It hasn’t been easy, but Fern’s made the most of it, making some major life changes to his life while on lockdown, moving to a plant-based diet with his wife. How could he not? He and his partner in art, Marty Mar, dropped an album in the middle of a global pandemic that came on the heels of the country’s largest racial reckoning and just ahead of one of its most pivotal elections. As one half of the Social Club Misfits, Miranda - better known to fans as Fern - knows it’s been a tough year.

Social club misfits discography