backseat downunder
News: Tom Odell’s Wonderful Life Tour set for Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in January 2026
Tom Odell will return to Australia in January 2026 for the Wonderful Life Tour, marking his first full run since 2014 and following his recent sold-out Opera House shows. The tour coincides with the release of his seventh album A Wonderful Life, a record that finds Odell balancing anxiety and fragile hope with unflinching honesty.
Album Review: Big Thief’s Double Infinity Finds Beauty in the Collision of Opposites
On their sixth album, Big Thief distill contradiction into melody—songs that hold sweetness and shame, mortality and permanence, all at once. Double Infinity is a luminous meditation on duality that cements Adrianne Lenker as one of the most fearless songwriters working today.
Album Review: CMAT’s Euro-Country Turns Heartbreak and Humour Into Pop Brilliance
On her third album, CMAT folds Irish politics, late-stage capitalism, and intimate confessions into a vivid pop-country palette. Euro-Country is at once biting and funny, sad and euphoric, proof of an artist who can turn a diss track about Jamie Oliver and a ballad about financial collapse into the same dazzling world.
Live Gallery: Sabaton storm Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion with history in their veins 6.09.2025
At the Hordern Pavilion, Sabaton’s stagecraft feels less like a concert and more like a living archive. Every blast of pyro, every martial stomp of rhythm, refracts through their two-decade devotion to metal as historical testimony. Before them, Amaranthe fold pop and death metal into something combustible, proof that even genre orthodoxies can burn bright under the right hands. Together, the two bands turn a Sydney night into an intercontinental lesson in scale, spectacle, and sheer force.
Live Gallery: Don Broco Keep Their Promise in a Sweaty Return to Sydney’s Manning Bar 5.09.2025
Don Broco turn Manning Bar into a furnace of energy, delivering on promises made to Australian fans and setting the stage for their next chapter, with RedHook laying the groundwork in a blistering support slot.
News: The Last Dinner Party announce massive UK, Europe and Australia/New Zealand tour alongside new album From The Pyre
The Last Dinner Party will release their sophomore album From The Pyre on 17 October 2025, before embarking on a 35-date headline tour spanning the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The run kicks off in Dublin this November and marks the band’s biggest international push to date.
News: Dream Pop Queen Hatchie returns with the epic, glittering single ‘Lose It Again’ and announces new album ‘Liquorice’.
It feels like eons since we heard from Meanjin/Brisbane Queen of Dream Pop Hatchie but in fact it was only in April last year that she released ‘Kiss Me (Kill Me)‘ with RINSE (partner Joe Agius). These days based in Naarm/Melbourne, Hatchie (the nome de plume of Harriette Pilbeam) has made a sneak return with …
News: Stewart Copeland to tour Australia & NZ for the first time in 18 years
Stewart Copeland will return to Australia and New Zealand in 2026 with Have I Said Too Much? The Police, Hollywood, And Other Adventures, his first local tour in 18 years. The seven-time Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee will share stories spanning The Police, film scores, and his acclaimed work in classical and opera.
Track: The Belair Lip Bombs drop new single ‘Don’t Let Them Tell You (It’s Fair)’
The Belair Lip Bombs return with ‘Don’t Let Them Tell You (It’s Fair)’, the second single from their debut album Again, out October 31 on Third Man Records. Inspired by a conversation with Alex Lahey, the track is a call for confidence and conviction.
News: The Beths announce national headline shows for 2026
New Zealand’s The Beths will return to Australia in April 2026 for their biggest headline shows yet, touring Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne behind their new album Straight Line Was A Lie.