J. McFarlane's Reality Guest

Ex-Twerps guitarist Julia McFarlane strays far from the style of that band in her solo guise of J. McFarlane's Reality Guest, instead opting for a more experimental, less-structured art pop sound, as evidenced on 2019's Ta Da. After spending the better part of a decade playing guitar, writing songs, and singing in the jangling, Flying Nun-inspired Twerps, McFarlane continued making music after the band's rocky demise in the mid-2010s. In 2016, she started Hot Topic with Rick Milovanovic and Violetta DelConte Race, and released a three-song single made up of sparse, arty pop. She also helped form the jangle pop band Blank Statements with Steph Hughes of Dick Diver. That band issued the mini-album Signs Are Rampant in 2017. After making it more of a solo project, she switched from the name Hot Topic to J. McFarlane's Reality Guest in 2018, and at the beginning of the next year released Ta Da on the Melbourne-based label Hobbies Galore. The music was intimate and restrained, conjuring up comparisons to the Marine Girls and Young Marble Giants thanks to the mix of warm melodies and sparse musical backing. She played all the instruments on the synth-heavy record herself save for flute, which was provided by experimental musician Ela Stiles. Stiles was also part of the live band along with Blank Statements' member Tamsen Hopkinson. Night School gave Ta Da a worldwide release in June of 2019.
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