Sydney’s multi-venue Volumes Festival is kicking off this month, and it’s absolutely packed with incredible local talent, across a variety of genres.
The full, monster lineup can be found here, but to help give you a slightly more manageable list to start with, we’ve enlisted the help of Joe Alexander from one of our favourite local labels, Bedroom Suck, which is home to a stack of great Aussie bands like Lower Plenty and Terrible Truths.
Joe definitely knows his stuff, and is the ideal guy to point you in the direction of five artists you definitely shouldn’t miss when it all goes down on Friday August 26 and Saturday August 27 (you can grab tickets here).
Rainbow Chan – Last
Duh! Who isn’t looking forward to seeing Rainbow Chan at this thing? I first stumbled across her music from 2012’s split with Outerwaves, a Brisbane artist who was a great friend of mine.
Her track, ‘Rabbit & Fox’, had a beautiful and subtle vocal performance that I loved, and since then she’s managed to keep that strength and turn the whole thing up a notch. Check out this for a hit.
Nicholas Allbrook – Karakatta Cemetery
Love this young man. He is absolutely one of the sweetest hearts around, a reflective soul who commits a hell of a lot to his music. Well worth your time.
Favourite memory: seeing him pick up an acoustic guitar down by the river at Camp Doogs and sheepishly play this song to a crowd who went absolutely wild. Also watching the Freo Dockers lose another round accompanied by his simple summary, “Well, back to Dockers sucking ass.”
You Beauty – Healin’ Spirit
So good! No bias whatsoever due to label representation. These guys are upping the ante for live performance in our music community, which is a great thing.
Marcus Whale (& Tom Smith) – Lugarno
Always so impressed with Marcus in everything he does, and now this incredible new solo guise!
Whenever a carload of dirty and exhausted bands from Brisbane used to show up in town, he would always let us stay at his place in Chippendale, even if there was no room. Many a good time spent in that kitchen. And this ‘Localities’ record he did with Tom Smith!? Imagine dropping this track on an unsuspecting 3am living-room dance floor.
Summer Flake – Wine Won’t Wash Away
Can’t go past these guys for one last mention. Such vocal perfection, with guitar solos that could get Jose Gonzalez buying himself a Big Muff for Christmas.
Steph Crase manages to take the tired, well-worn road of guitar pop and somehow use this medium to transcend into a realm of beauty and art, something which surely must be near impossible to pull off these days.
