New Sydney "Indie Sounds" compilation looms, tour dates announced

The release of Vil-Nil Records’ “Indie Sounds From The Harbour City Volume 2” is imminent, and a tour to support it has been announced.

A stack of Sydney appear on the LP and CD. The roll call is Hard Ons, Van Ruin, The Darrans, Mezcaltones, Nunchukka Superfly, The On and Ons, The Jane Does, Tshitaki, Fowl Weather Vein, Disgraceland, Division 4, Jupiter 5, Pocketwatch, and  Little Incursions.

Album pre-sales are open here. Don't be tardy. It will sell out, just like its predecessor. 

The accompanying tour is extensive, taking in Sydney, Canberra, Coffs Harbour, the Central West, Wollongong, the Central Coast and the Shoalhaven, as well as a gig in Brisbane. Bands appearing include The Jane Does, Fowl Weather Vein, Jupiter 5, The On and Ons, DISCGRACEland, Owen Guns, Loose Surface and I Hate People.

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• the on and ons
• jupiter 5
• the owen guns
• pocketwatch
• DISGRACEland
• the jane does
• fowl weather vein
• indie sounds from the harbour cityy

Sydney's The Jane Does make a name for themselves on debut LP

The Jane Does – The Jane Does (self released)

It seems hard to find good bands fronted by women no longer aged in their teens in Sydney these days. The reality is that the city’s small roster of rock and roll venues means the sisters (mums? aunts?) aren’t hiding, you just need to look for them at the right time.

Along with The Sugar Beats and Raising Ravens, The Jane Does are the pick of the semi-femme crop (although technically you could say that the former come from Wollongong.)

The Jane Does are  Rebecca Halley (vocals and guitar) and Joanne Bennett (bass and vocals) sharing front-of-stage duties with guitarist Matt Allison. Rebecca and Jo are cousins and have shared stages before. They’ve had a series of drummers but Tim Savage now seems firmly sequestered on the stool, barring spontaneous combustion or bizarre gardening accidents.

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• the jane does
• ROCKS
• matt allison
• joanne bennett
• rebecca halley

Asteroids and Cam Butler bring new releases while Ketamine Cowboys are feeling a little dusty

On the back of their long-awaited return to Australia in June last year Asteroid B-612 (above) are back with another dose of high-octane rock.

Their brand-new single, “Fallen Slow’”, will be released on April 10 via Golden Robot Records and is available to pre-save now on all major streaming platforms.

The re-tooled Asteroids were in Australia to promote their  2025 album “Roads, Stars”, the band found themselves with a rare few hours to spare during rehearsals. Wasting no time, Johnny Casino and Co headed into the studio.

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• asteroid b612
• swashbuckling hobo
• cam butler
• golden robot
• ron s peno
• ketamine cowboys

This punk rock purity was Maid for your ears

Maids In Bataan  - The Maids (Gutterwall Records)

There is a genre of music that collectors refer to as “Killed By Death” or ” KBD”. The label refers to onscure 1970s or 1980s punk rock records that were usually independently released by the bands themselves in small print runs.

“Killed By Death” was also a series of bootleg compilation albums that illegally reissued these songs (kind of like the “Pebbles” of ‘70s and ‘80s punk).

The Maids’ recordings were first heard by the punk rock collecting masses on volumes 7 and 17 of “Killed By Death” and thanks to these bootleggers, the legend of the band has grown.

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• killed by death
• the maids
• maid in bataan
• gutterwall records

IT'S AN ULTRA MONDO DELUXE UNDERGROUND SCENE REPORT

I Wanna Live Before I Die b/w Let Me Go – The North Hollywood Phantoms (Heavy Medication Records)

By JD Misfortune and The Ball Tonights

If you're a rock ‘n’ roll diehard like me, you probably go through fallow stages where you just can't locate fresh and original rock ‘n’ roll motherfuckery to help cope with the obscenely darkening and depraved, authoritarian cyberhell and demonic police state new world disorder chaos swirling all around us.

These cats, Richard Duguay and Pat Todd, are the best of the best, utter assassins of lukwarm, ho-hum mediocrity, they have come to raise a ruckous, yank you outta your collective trauma and make you feel like Little Richard. When it comes to producing high quality, dirty and dangerous, blues infused derelict poetic rock ‘n’ roll with that heartland feel, you have to go all the way to Australia to find other contemporaries creating modern art jampacked with that much soulpower and vivid storytellin', these blokes know how to spin a purple yarn, a mile long, on broken glass with runny black eye makeup.

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• pat todd
• heavy medication records
• the north hollywood phantoms
• richard dugay

Hoody's Normals return from the grave with a 45

Anorexia Nervosa b/w Bananas – The Normals (Leather Jacket Records)

Before The Allniters, before The Johnnys, before The Cool Charmers and before The Silver Dragons, Graham Hood was a young Kiwi punky rock chap playing in The Normals, who were Wellington’s first ever punk band. Future Headless Chicken Mike Lawry played guitar, Dazee Day was on vocals (she’s now a successful fashion label owner) and Karl Scutt (who went onto Domestic Blitz) was on drums.

Formed in 1978 and dead by 1979 - truly a band in the live fast, die young mould - they recorded three songs, two of which appear for the first time here on a label run by The Flying Nun folks via their punk subsidiary, Leather Jacket Records (good name hey?).

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• the johnnys
• graham hood
• the normals
• the allniters
• anorexia nervosa
• bannanas

Let's pay tribute to Suicide and Alan Vega while we get Lunch

New York No Wave Queen Lydia Lunch returns to Australia and Nedw Zealand in June to perform the songs of synth–punk duo Suicide and Suicide vocalist Alan Vega.

Lunch will be joined by Andrew Coates of revered Melbourne electro trio, Black Cab to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Vega’s passing, with special guests.

The Melbourne show will feature both principals of Black Cab, Coates and James Lee.

Lunch originally met Suicide – the duo of late vocalist Alan Vega and multi-instrumentalist Martin Rev – in the 1970s, when she moved to New York City from Rochester as a teenager. They formed a lifelong bond and she often joined them on-stage to perform the song “Frankie Teardrop”,  recording a duet as part of Vega’s solo album “Sniper”, a collaboration with French experimental artist Marc Hurtado.

Since Vega’s passing in 2016, Lunch has performed several Suicide tribute shows,  often with Hurtado; together the pair recently released the live album “Metempsychosis: Reincarnate the Music of Alan Vega + Suicide”.

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• suicide
• lydia lunch
• alan vega
• black cab

The Leftards say goodbye as Dion and Nick clean out their sock drawers

By The Barman

Having trouble keeping up with the plethora of new releases each week? Too much music, too many formats.

The struggle is real.

Welcome to The I-94 Bar's semi-regular round-up of new music that might appeal to Barflies. 

First cabs of the rank are Wollongong, New South Wales, performance art-punks The Leftards who are calling it a day after almost a decade.

Their swansong release, “Bread and Circuses”, is available via their Bandcamp.

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• the d4
• nick barker
• dion lunadon
• the leftards
• bread and circuses
• rare gems volume one
• loose vol II

Haunting tribute to a lost time

Spirits Of The Hoey. A Love Letter To The Hopetoun Hotel
By Liz Giuffre and Gregory Ferris
Images by Bryan Cook
Melbourne Books

By The Barman

Love letters aren’t meant to be literary works; they’re words from the heart. That’s as apt as any descriptor for “Spirits Of The Hoey”, a 208-page softcover ode to a Sydney pub that closed its doors 16 years ago.

Every city should have a Hoey. Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sydney had a few of them. I was always more of an Excelsior person, but The Hoey had something that it and other pubs lacked (maybe with the eventual exception of The Sando at Newtown) and that was a clientele that regarded it as a second home.

Back then, cheap rents and plentiful run-down inner-city housing meant the Sydney underground musical scene’s nexus was a handful of postcodes spanning Darlinghurst, Surry Hills and maybe Paddington.

You could have thrown a blanket over them (preferably black - as someone sonce said, it wasn't a colour but a way of life.) The Hoey was “the local” for many musicians in the scene. It may not have been Ground Zero for the city's underground rock but you could see it from there.  

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• melbourne books
• spirits of the hoey
• Liz Giuffre
• Gregory Ferris
• bryan cook
• hopetoun hotel