Set to head out on tour together next month, supersonic new star NOAHFINNCE and Bears in Trees have teamed up for a new (suitably titled) track, ‘No Point Pretending (Song For Tour)’. A song about feeling lost in life and trying to choose the path to follow, it comes at a time Noah’s ascent seems pretty damn set on course. We caught up for our latest Hype playlist cover story.
Words: Ali Shutler.
NOAHFINNCE just wants to have fun. That desire for a good time is scrawled throughout his boisterous back catalogue of positive pop-punk and sits at the beating heart of new song ‘No Point Pretending (Song For Tour)’.
Written alongside dirtbag boyband (their words, not ours) Bears In Trees ahead of a US tour together next month, ‘No Point Pretending’ sits somewhere between NOAHFINNCE’s bratty punk and Bears In Trees slacker pop. Simply put, it sounds “completely different” to everything NOAHFINNCE has ever released, but it’s still driven by a communal joy.
“I was nervous about going into the studio with them because there’s four of them, there’s only one of me,” admits Noah Adams, but luckily the whole process was a stress-free dream. The end result is “a good middle ground between our two bands,” Noah tells Dork, fresh from a weekend video shoot that saw them pushing each other about in trolleys. As you do.
The first lyric written for the track is the first one you hear – “I can’t find my brain. Oh well, I think I lost it anyway”. From there, the collaborative group followed that path to create a song that deals with “feeling a bit lost in life.”
“The world feels like it’s moving so fast nowadays,” explains Noah. “We’re all in our 20s, so we’re adults, but not really. The song’s about knowing who you are, but not really knowing what to do with that.”
Noah first toured with Bears In Trees back in 2021, and they’ve remained friends ever since. “I like how themselves they are,” he says, explaining how they share a like-minded attitude. “A lot of people are under pressure to try and fit themselves into something that’s easy for the algorithm to pick up. They’re just doing their own shit. I feel like we come from a similar place,” he continues. “We’re all a bit weird.”
‘No Point Pretending’ is the first proper collaboration NOAHFINNCE has been involved in, and it comes as the artist is trying to push himself out of his comfort zone. “I absolutely want to scare myself… just a little bit, though,” he says. Last month, Noah played his first-ever support slots, taking to the stage before Enter Shikari at their intimate UK residencies. “The shows were great,” he beams. “I didn’t realise how chill being the support act was, though.”
Like most Gen-Z musicians, Noah started his career in music posting covers on social media. He pivoted to YouTube from Instagram due to the latter’s 15-second video limit. When he came out as transgender in 2017, he used his growing platform to answer the many questions that came with it. He went on to release his first original song ‘Asthma Attack’ in 2018 and was picked up by Hopeless Records (Taking Back Sunday, The Wonder Years) in 2020, with debut EP ‘Stuff From My Brain’ coming the following year.
“The song’s about knowing who you are, but not really knowing what to do with that”
NOAHFINNCE
2021 also saw him play his first-ever live shows. “The day we firmed up those initial touring plans, I spent most of it crying. I was worried I’d be no good,” he says. Once that first headline gig was over, though, “I realised, holy shit, this is the best thing ever.”
“I was in a room full of people who liked me,” which is always nice, but more than that, “It felt like I was surrounded by people who came from a really similar place and understood me.”
“Being signed during COVID does mean I skipped so many steps,” Noah continues. “It’s obviously been terrifying but nothing disastrous has happened yet,” so why stop now?
Because he grew up in the scene, going to gigs and making friends at shows, Noah says he feels “very confident with where I am. It’s just weird trying to figure out where other people are trying to place me.” It’s going to get even harder with new songs that “don’t fit into what pop-punk should be.” Not that Noah cares. “They sound fucking sick.”
With tracks like ‘Life’s A Bit’ and ‘Stupid’, Noah was part of a new generation of pop-punk artists that seemingly proved the scene was more diverse, more accepting than it had been in its 00s hey-day. Sure, some people said the only reason he got signed was because of “diversity reasons”, but Noah’s got no problem telling them, “my guy, no. It’s because they like my music”.
Similarly, his guitar-driven, coming-of-age songs fit in nicely with current TikTok trends, but Noah’s known exactly what sort of music he’s wanted to make since he was 4. “My mum says I would cry if we didn’t play Green Day in the car,” admits Noah while the first band he really fell in love with was Busted. “The majority of people who aren’t complete assholes seem to get that I’m only doing this because I love it.”
He acknowledges the pop-punk resurgence has good points and bad points, but that’s a conversation for another time. “Ultimately, if it hadn’t happened, there’d be a whole generation of kids that would have never gotten into this genre,” he says.
Despite skipping straight to headline shows and finding an audience on YouTube, Noah doesn’t feel like he needs to prove himself to anybody. “I feel like I want to though,” he says with a grin. “It’s just really inspiring and really nice to see a bunch of kids doing well that would have been my best friends, if we’d grown up in the same town or whatever.”
Noah uses his music to process what he’s feeling. “I don’t go into the studio with a plan. It’s more about how I’m feeling and what sounds cool,” he says. His two recent EPs are a reaction to a few years that have been “ridiculously intense”.
“I finished school, I came out, I started testosterone and then had top surgery. Then COVID happened, I got signed, started touring and yeah… a lot of crazy shit,” he says. After releasing his debut EP, Noah started therapy to try and deal with the emotional whiplash of several life-changing events happening all at once. “It was great, but I think writing the songs was actually more helpful,” he says.
Noah constantly wants to look on the bright side of things. “I feel like it’s very easy to focus on negative things. In this scene, we all love emo shit. We’re all depressed. I don’t want to be that person who’s telling people, ‘this fucking thing sucks’, and that’s it. I want my music to be more than just that.”
A lot of that positivity is a result of Noah going through some traumatic life events before he was even a teenager. “Growing up, I just had to accept that bad shit happens,” he says.
“My mum says I would cry if we didn’t play Green Day in the car”
NOAHFINNCE
On his YouTube channel, Noah’s just as determined to not get bogged down by the negativity. He regularly shares videos mocking transphobic hate for three very good reasons. “It’s funny, it’s free content, and some people may click on it and be like, ‘Oh, shit, I didn’t realise this is actually what people have to deal with. I thought you were exaggerating.”
“I grew up on the Internet. I hit 100,000 followers when I was 16 and was doxed when I was still at school. I’m 23 now, and I’m very used to the kind of abuse you get online. I’ve just learned to deal with it,” he explains. “It’s better than crying about it.”
Still, the past few months have seen him get more vocal about trans issues, and he believes his music is political simply because of who’s making it.
“When I came out in 2017, I thought things were going to get better,” he says. “More people were talking about trans rights; it seemed like society was going to be more accepting. That really isn’t the way things have gone.”
“It’s really frustrating because I dealt with all that trans trauma a good few years ago growing up in a very conservative boarding school. I got my tits removed ages ago; being trans is not something that crosses my mind in my personal life.”
“The only reason that it crosses my mind now is because of the insane amount of transphobia that happens,” he continues. “I don’t want to be known as a trans artist, there’s so much more to me, but there are things that I’m angry about – like the fact my very existence has been turned into a political debate. Every trans person is inherently politicised because they exist in a culture that doesn’t want them to exist; it fucking sucks.”
“Talking about it, though, it’s helped me find my people.”
NOAHFINNCE kicks off his US headline tour on 3rd April, playing 22 shows in a month. “The emphasis is on the fun for these gigs,” he explains. “I’m not fussed about having the biggest mosh pit in the world; I just want people to have as much fun as possible because they’ll be going home in an hour.”
Talking about what he wants his music to mean to others, Noah explains: “I’ve put up with enough shit in my life. I want to live without compromise. That is the general vibe of what I’m trying to do. You might feel like a misfit or feel like you don’t fit in, but you shouldn’t have to compromise who you are to make other people happy.” ■
NOAHFINNCE & Bears in Trees’ new single ‘No Point Pretending (Song For Tour)’ is streaming now. Follow Dork’s Hype Spotify playlist here.
