Q and A: Alex Neville (Downgirl)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

FOLLOWING a burst of activity at the start of this year, Sydney punks Downgirl have been cooling their heels for much of 2025. At the beginning of December, they returned with a bang. Inspired by a frightening night spent in the wake of a rural festival appearance, the explosive “CPR” is their first new music in more than 12 months. 

Taking a break from an afternoon gym workout, singer Alex Neville told us a little more about it.

Hot Metal: Congratulations on the release of the new single. You must be pretty happy.
Alex Neville: “We’re all very pleased and super happy. Still gotta work, and stuff, as you know. Still doing the day job! But we’re really happy.”

HM: Yeah, you’re not bringing in the Grammy Awards just yet.
AN: “No! Not yet. I’m winning the award of my mum’s approval, and my dad’s approval, thus far. And even that’s shaky!”

HM: Well, you’re in a band! Any approval you get from your parents for that is good, right?
AN: “Exactly. Well, they’re also both musos, so they like it.”

HM: We’ve been looking forward to a new song from Downgirl for quite a while.
AN: “Yes – it’s been a moment!”

HM: A pretty long moment!
AN: “I can’t even remember the last thing we did… that’s right, [2024’s] ‘Horsegirl’ and ‘Dig’. It’s been a second.

HM: You’ve still done a little bit – you played at Mardi Gras.
AN: “Yeah, we headlined the lesbian event for that, which is awesome. We supported Spiderbait – that was all in the same month, so it was a bit of a whirlwind. But this year’s been a bit more low key. You know how it is, sometimes things just take a bit longer. Sometimes things shift and you have to take priority, but we’re really glad to be back and doing more things.”

HM: Tell us a little bit about “CPR”.
AN: “The song’s pretty funny, actually. It was inspired by – and I won’t try and name name or go into too much detail but it’s – a very specific scenario… We went to a festival, a very rural festival – we do them all the time, we love them – and there was not anything specifically wrong with this one, but the demographic was a lot more – um, let’s say there wasn’t a lot of women there. There was a lot of drinking and hard-drug taking by these men. We ended up sleeping huddled up together in a tent with a baseball bat, because we were surrounded by some pretty interesting characters. We left that scenario thinking, Wow, you don’t think about that too much, putting yourself in that situation as a woman. And it can be fatal! It happens a lot, and this song’s dedicated to male violence, in a sense. It’s not something we think about because the people in our lives are pretty safe. I’ve got my partner, we’ve all got friends, and sometimes you find yourself in scary scenarios, like being a lamb in a lion’s den.”

HM: You addressed something similar with “Boys” from the Manic EP, but this seems a little more serious and darker.
AN: “Yeah, I guess so… They’re both pretty serious. I swear I’m not a man-hater! “Boys” is a bit more about playfulness, about hyper-masculinity and how it’s a little bit sad, and how it’s so hard to express yourself. At least, that’s the experience I’ve had from men in my life. They feel a bit trapped by their masculinity. Whereas this is more about asking for this type of masculinity to take care of us, and can you show me love? I don’t want men to be my enemy. If you could just acknowledge me as a person. It’s a heavy topic.” 

HM: The clip that goes with this is ridiculously awesome. It sort of shows the Enmore Hotel in a bit of a different light, but anyone who knows that place for its previous life would know what a vibe it had in the past.
AN: “Yeah, exactly. Because the subject of the song is so heavy, we wanted to flip it and show some of the places where we’ve always felt safe, and they are usually queer spaces. Historically, gay and lesbian queer spaces have been safe for straight women. That’s something that’s usually acknowledged. [The Enmore] used to be the Sly Fox, which was a very popular lesbian hotspot. So we wanted to celebrate that a bit more, rather than continue to go into the narrative about male violence. That’s not as much fun! We had Dykes on Bikes there, which is a really cool bunch of people. Immediately after that, we were all looking up how to get a license to ride a bike!”