Sydney finally feels like winter tonight. The cold cuts through the streets outside, but inside The Lansdowne Hotel the room is already packed shoulder-to-shoulder long before HighSchool even appear. Backseat Mafia has consistently championed the band’s releases over the years and nights like this make it easy to understand why. Few Australian bands right now feel as carefully constructed yet emotionally loose at the same time.
Opening the night are Rain Dogs, with HighSchool’s Luke Scott pulling double duty on bass. Their set pulses with motorik rhythms and icy synth textures, sounding a little like Depeche Mode if Jim Morrison had wandered into the studio and decided to front them. The songs move in long nocturnal stretches, hypnotic without becoming static.
Then comes Kidskin, who shifts the room entirely. Her electronic grooves loosen the crowd up immediately, turning the packed Lansdowne into a swaying mass of movement. On a freezing Sydney night, she brings genuine warmth to the room, pulling people out of themselves and into the rhythm with a set that feels fluid, hypnotic and deeply danceable.
By the time HighSchool walk onstage, the Lansdowne feels transformed. Augmented live by Lily Trobbiani and Lucy Lamb, the band bring a sharper physicality to the hazy tension of their recorded material. Songs from their recent self-titled debut LP stretch wider live, guitars shimmering against mechanical rhythms while Rory Trobbiani’s vocals hover somewhere between intimacy and distance.
There’s an unmistakable late-2000s after-hours atmosphere hanging over everything. Not nostalgia exactly, but fragments of it: dimly lit indie discos, cigarette smoke outside club doors, suburban aimlessness turned cinematic. Produced by Ben Hillier, the album already hinted at that aesthetic world, but live it feels warmer and more human.
What stands out most is how locked-in the crowd is. Nobody seems interested in talking over the set or treating it like background music. The room moves together in that rare way where a band’s atmosphere completely overtakes the venue around them. HighSchool have spent years building hype through EPs like Forever At Last and Accelerator, but tonight feels less like buzz and more like confirmation. One of Australia’s most compelling young bands fully settling into themselves.
The tour moves to Brisbane, Melbourne and Auckland next, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
