After a pandemic a devastating loss, the sophomore album by queer rock duo The FMs, “Pink + Black,” will finally see the light of day Friday.
Completed in early 2020 in a floating studio between Queens and Brooklyn, the album represented a more personal era for the then-up-and-coming band, according to vocalist and bassist Matt Namer, who uses she/they pronouns.
As the pandemic hit, Namer and their band partner Frankie Rex, who used they/them pronouns, had started to gain national recognition. But after vocalist and guitarist Red died from a fentanyl overdose in May 2022 at the age of 37, the band’s future became unclear.
In March, after a two-year hiatus, Namer announced a new iteration of the band, consisting of a new lineup of trans musicians who will soon release all-new material in an upcoming album.
But Rex’s final work will now be immortalized with the release of “Pink + Black.”
“From almost the moment they passed on, I knew that this was my responsibility — I had to make sure that this work that they had done, that the world got to hear it and see it,” Namer told the Daily News.
The album will be released at the first-ever Frankie Fest, an annual “queer rock festival honoring the legacy of Frankie Rex.”
The festival, a benefit for the Chosen Family Law Center, will take place at Coney Island USA on Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. and feature performances by Pink Velvet Witch, Jordan Fiction, Villains, Llynks, Frida Kill and Miss Cherry Delight.
It will also mark the first performance by The FMs in four years — and the first without Rex.
The formation of The FMs is a quintessential New York City story. Both Namer and Rex were raised in the city and bonded over their love for synthesizer rock and their exploration of their gender identity.
Namer, a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Rex, who went to the St. Agnes Academic High School, a now-defunct all-girl Catholic school in Queens, met through a friend.
Their friendship blossomed into The FMs, which took off in 2016 with a sound described as an “irreverent mix of ’90s psychedelic-industrial grunge and dance-pop.”
However, its early conception can perhaps be traced to 2009, when Namer and some friends began throwing “big, 1,000-person underground illegal parties” on a decommissioned ferry boat in the middle of Bushwick.
In the late 2000s, the ferry became a vibrant hub for the city’s creative community. “Over the years it became a co-op living space for a while [until] firefighters picked everyone off in 2013,” they said.
After the eviction, Namer and Rex used a “hot dingy room in this boat with no windows” to record “Pink + Black” — which was both bizarre and inspiring, Namer said.
On March 13, 2020 — a day after what would’ve been Rex’s final show with The FMs — Namer relocated to Ithaca, N.Y. with his two partners, whom he’d met at a kink festival.
“We moved in together at the beginning of the pandemic,” they said. “Now the three of us live together in a house up there, and we are in a wonderful, idyllic, polyamorous triad.”
