Ears Wide Open: Fast Money Music

Kevin Bronson on June 27th, 2023

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Someone asked: What ever happened to Palm Springsteen? The year before the pandemic turned the volume down on everything, the L.A. outfit got us in a tizzy with singles such as “Hey There Cowgirl” and “Sister Sister.”

Well, meet Fast Money Music, the new project from Bay Area native Nick Hinman, who’s called New York and Los Angeles home and, when COVID-19 hit, found himself in the U.K. “I came to London in February 2020 with a new group of songs and the intention to make a full record,” he told Ticketpass. “Little did any of us know, the universe had other plans for that year.”

So Hinman started a new project, which this month brought the release of Fast Money Music’s debut EP, “Strange Moments,” produced by Mikko Gordon and Sam Petts-Davies. It’s got a little of Palm Springsteen’s faux-bad-boy post-punk and caustic guitars, but also a lot of ’80s pop influences.

“FMM is my story and my truth,” Hinman said in the aforementioned interview. “After years of hiding behind the facade of silly band names and goofball songwriting, I decided that I should either write what I know, or not write anymore. I was always struggling with the idea that I’d created a joke that I wanted people to take seriously. But that had a safety net from criticism, because if it wasn’t liked, it was only a joke anyway.

“So instead, I formed FMM. It’s my trials and tribulations with managed expectations, grief, sorrow, hope, redemption: real-life stuff. The ‘Strange Moments’ EP is a diary entry in that respect. This time it’s meant to be taken seriously. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have a sense of humor.”

||| Stream: The title track of the EP