What happens when the beautiful future we were promised actually arrives and we discover that being human hasn’t changed?
The song ‘Hovercars‘ is a meditation on disappointment, vulnerability, and the strange gap between the life we were promised and the life we actually inhabit.
The chorus lyric: “you were promised stars / not broken hearts in hover cars” is central to this theme: you were promised something extraordinary, but reality arrived damaged.
I’d describe the song as surreal existential pop about the emotional hangover of modern life.
The Insufferable Paul Scott is a Sydney-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose music occupies the fertile territory between indie pop, post-punk eccentricity and beautifully crafted lo-fi song. His work is characterised by melodic immediacy, skewed observation and an irreverent intelligence: pop music with its tie loosened, its shoes kicked off and its eyebrow permanently raised.
From 2020 onward, Scott has produced a remarkably sustained body of work. The EP ‘Radio Station‘ and single ‘Things Are More Like They Are Right Now, Than They’ve Ever Been Before‘, announced a songwriter equally comfortable with hooks and absurdity.
The 2021 album ‘Tea and Medals‘ remains a central work of the period. Recorded during lockdown and subsequently released in January 2022, its twelve songs turn isolation into invention, folding jangling guitars, synth-pop textures and understated experimentalism around Scott’s dry, often oblique lyricism. His collaboration with Steve Melville, who co-produced and mixed the record, also deepened a musical relationship dating back to their earlier work together.
If ‘Tea and Medals‘ consolidated Scott’s voice, 2024 saw him accelerate it. ‘Faster Than Witches‘, ‘Dopamine Mining‘ (recorded with The New Conniptions) and ‘Data Wolves’ formed a burst of releases that seemed less like a conventional release schedule than an ongoing argument with the limitations of genre and productivity.
In 2025 came ‘Extinct‘, described as the final stop on Scott’s “electro-pop” tour, followed by the twelve-track album ‘For They Are Sailors Just Like You And Seasick Just The Same‘ co-produced and mixed by LA musician and producer Gregg Leonard.
By 2026 the singles ‘Imperial Display‘, ‘Sunflower Seas‘, ‘Local Gods‘, ‘In the Dark‘ and ‘The Age‘ continued the trajectory: melodic, restless and defiantly independent.
Scott’s achievement is ultimately one of persistence and autonomy. He has made prolificacy itself an artistic principle, producing music that is funny without being frivolous, experimental without sacrificing melody, and unmistakably his own.
Stream New Single ‘Hovercars’ Below
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