Local indie/alt punks The Maggie Pills are back, teasing a completed second album and a renewed sound. The Merri Mirror spoke with frontwoman Delfi Sorondo on Friday, ahead of the band’s first show of the year.

Your sound seemed tidier, less fuzzy, in your last single (2024’s “GOLD”). What can we expect from the new album?

The previous album (2023’s “Hope is a Risk”) was pretty dirty and messy and loud, and now maybe it’s a little bit more, I don’t know, maybe post-punk-ey [or] alternative?

The spirit is the same, but the sound [has changed] a little bit. It has some more electronic components, and the vocals are much more produced.

The ways of singing and performing [are] much more quirky in a lot of songs, but then on others are much more serious in, like, the interpretation; kind of like going into a character, like a little bit of acting when you’re singing, you know?

We really let ourselves play a lot more than the last time I was recording. When we were writing Hope is a Risk, it was just me and Mario (The Pills’ drummer), and then all the actual members started joining us. This time we wrote collaboratively with them. This new sound is because of that.

Will your upcoming gigs bring that new sound to a live crowd, or will it be closer to what people are used to?

Honestly, we are going to find out tomorrow [at Mordi Fest]. Margie (the band’s new bassist) has a really cool sound and brings a lot from the hardcore she plays. I think it’s still going to be a very high energy show, like, the new songs are (nods enthusiastically). At the same time it goes to darker, more mystical places in terms of sound, the lyrics are a little bit more personal and a little bit more deep.

It’s going to be different, but we’re really happy with how it turned out. There’s a lot of components; more goth-ey, more post-punk, more about atmosphere and not being loud all the time. Like, that was actually something we had to decide on when we were thinking of mastering [the new album]: how do we do it? It’s going to be different, but we feel that it’s very Maggie Pills still.

Who mastered the new album?

Emerson Mancini, a trans producer based in LA. He works for, like, Paramore, Kendrick Lamar. He has this whole manifesto about his views and his philosophy. We found a queer engineer who has all of the same values we love, and has also been, like, working with huge people. We just took a shot and the result was amazing. I think that also adds to the change in sound. I think it’s going to be evolved.

When do we get to hear the new album?

Very likely going to be the second half of the year. Spring, maybe. I like a spring album.

But we’re going to release a couple of singles first, beginning in a couple of months, probably.

You probably get asked this a lot, but what’s the origin of your band’s name?

We love that; not a lot of people know this because no one asks. When me and Mario came to Melbourne, I found this website where you could do pet sitting. We were hired to look after a dog and a cat in a house in Richmond, and that was at the same time we [begun] putting the band together. We started writing our first songs in that house, and we were completely head over heels in love with the chihuahua we were looking after, whose name is Maggie. Every morning, Maggie’s adoptive mum left us these pills that we had to give her.

And we said ‘okay, let’s do the band as an ode to Maggie’, which was like our spiritual leader. After looking at a few versions of the words, like Maggie’s Pills, Pills for Maggie, we ended up settling on The Maggie Pills because of The Smashing Pumpkins.

The Maggie Pills will support Shihad for a sold-out show at the Corner on 5 March, before headlining the Bergy Bandroom on 7 March.

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This interview first appeared in the Merri Mirror’s 3 March 2025 print edition

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Photos: The Maggie Pills perform at their 2023 album launch at the Bergy Bandroom. The author has more photos from the gig on MELMAG.

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