The second night of Levitation Austin 2022 started at Hotel Vegas. I hadn’t been to a show there since 2013 and was delighted to see the place hadn’t changed much. If anything, the outdoor stage area seemed a bit bigger.
Warm Dragwere the first act we saw that night, putting on the sexiest show of the weekend with their blend of electro, fuzz, and spooky rock. Lead singer Vashti Windish owned the stage in her biker leather while percussionist / beat master Paul Quattrone got to work in his tank top. The crowd was hypnotized by them both by their set’s end.
Warm Drag
Quattrone took a water break and then was back on stage with the rest of his Osees bandmates for the second night of their four-night residency at Hotel Vegas. They came out swinging, blasting through a lot of tracks in just an hour. Their raging punk set of material from their new album, A Foul Form, left the audience breathless multiple times.
Osees
We left Hotel Vegas for Elysium to catch the rare performance by The UFO Club – a sort of supergroup consisting of members of Night Beats and The Black Angels, who performed their (so far) only album from beginning to end. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to hear those songs live, so this set was one of the highlights of the festival for me.
The UFO Club
The night ended with Mexican psych-rock legends Los Dug Dug’s. They played a fun blend of psych, surf, and border rock.
Los Dug Dug’s
Up next would be a trio of Australian bands and doom metal in a blues bar.
This year’s lineup for Levitation was stacked. Osees playing all four nights, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizardplaying twice, Slift coming in from France, The Jesus and Mary Chain coming in from the UK? Sign me up.
Day One (Thursday) started, as usual with a stop at Pelon’s for some Tex-Mex and then over to Stubb’s for the first three-band set we’d see over the weekend. Opening the festival for us were the post-punk trio Automatic, who had only improved since we’d seen them at Levitation France four months earlier. They also had some of the best sound mixing of the entire weekend.
Automatic
A lot of people loved Automatic’s set. We saw plenty of people carrying new Automatic tote bags and wearing new band shirts afterwards. Up next was Detroit’s Protomartyr delivering a powerful set of urgent post-punk. Afterwards, they announced a surprise show at the 13th Floor bar down the street the following night.
Protomartyr
The Stubb’s show ended with shoegaze giants The Jesus and Mary Chain, who, despite having problems with a distortion pedal, put on a good set of classics and new material to a loving crowd who thought they sounded great without the faulty pedal.
The Jesus and Mary Chain
That didn’t end our night, however. We walked over to Elysium for the sold-out show featuring Slift – the cosmic metal band from Toulouse, France. Anticipation was high for the set, and they did not disappoint. The raw power coming from them in the small venue was almost overpowering at some points. They were drenched with sweat by the end of the first song, as was most of the audience. It was the end of their U.S. tour and their first time in Austin, so they poured out all the gas in the tank they had left for the crowd. Theirs was the best set of the night.
Slift
It was a great way to open what would be a fun four days. Up next would be a return to Hotel Vegas for the first time in years, the sexiest set of the weekend, and a band I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see live.
This was my second time seeing Chicago queercore punk band Bev Rage and the Drinks, and it was, so far, the loudest set I’ve seen them play.
First up in the small Brass Rail dive bar in downtown Fort Wayne, were The Namby Pamby, who I hadn’t seen before now. Their stuff reminded me of some of Nirvana‘s mellower tracks with harder-edged R.E.M. thrown in for good measure. It’s an interesting sound that feels familiar and yet kind of exotic.
The Namby Pamby
As I mentioned before, Bev Rage and the Drinks came out and proceeded to blast the Brass Rail’s bar out onto Broadway. I don’t know how much of it was the place’s acoustics, how much was their amps turned up to eleven, and how much of it was Ms. Rage and her band’s blazing fury, but the power of their set was palpable. They ripped through tracks from their last two albums, ending with a hard-hitting version of “Permanent Receptionist.”
Bev Rage and The Drinks
Necromoon played after them, but I was exhausted after a long work day and had to leave to make it home safe that night. It was a fun night, however, and Bev Rage always puts on a great show.
There was a guy wearing a TV set on his head when I walked into Piere’s Entertainment Center in Ft. Wayne, Indiana on September 20, 2022.
That guy was Mobley – a one-man show who played a wild mix of electro and soul on everything from guitar, drum kit, keyboards, and a sequencer. His video clips displayed behind him were perfectly synchronized with his fun set, showing lyrics and images from his tracks.
Mobley
I was mainly there to see The Joy Formidable, who were opening for The Front Bottoms. The crowd was heavy with Front Bottoms fans, judging by the number of band shirts I saw in the crowd, and hardly anyone knew who The Joy Formidable were. It was also, according to lead singer and guitarist Rhiannon “Ritzy” Bryan, the band’s first time playing in Fort Wayne.
They proceeded to shred the entire stage, almost demolishing it and leaving nothing for The Front Bottoms to use afterwards. They were fired up to play, with Bryan sometimes so energetic that she head-butted bassist / co-vocalist Rhydian Dafydd in the chest – twice.
They opened with “The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade” and rarely let up to take a breath. They would retune, and then rip into another track, ending their too short set with a stunning, long, blazing edition of “Whirring.”
I left after their set. The Front Bottoms’ style of music isn’t my thing, and I felt bad for them having to follow The Joy Formidable, because, as one guy in the crowd who’d never heard them before said after their set, “That was some hard shit.”
Forty years after its release Motörhead classic Iron Fist album is given a stunning reissue that includes enough bonus tracks for two full albums.
The album sounds harder than ever with the new remastering. The title track opens the record with furious drumming from Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor, and the album rarely, if ever, lets up. “Heart of Stone” is just as angry as it’s always been, as is the raw “Go to Hell” – a song you’ll want to send to your boss at that job you hate as you walk out the door. “Speedfreak” sums up Motörhead’s lifestyle, really.
After the send-off of “Bang to Rights,” we’re treated to six demo tracks from 1981: “Remember Me, I’m Gone,” “The Doctor,” “Young & Crazy,” “Loser,” “Iron Fist,” and “Go to Hell.” Seven more bonus tracks follow on the CD and digital versions of the album: The wonderfully grungy “Lemmy Goes to the Pub,” “Same Old Song, I’m Gone,” a crushing alternate version of “(Don’t Let ’em) Grind Ya Down,” “Shut It Down,” and three instrumentals – “Sponge Cake,” “Ripsaw Teardown,” and a barely recognizable cover of the “Peter Gunn” theme.
As if all this wasn’t enough, there’s also a previously unreleased live album recorded at the Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland on March 18, 1982. It’s a stunning, fuzzy, eardrum-blasting recording that opens with a version of “Iron Fist” that sounds like they’re playing it while the Apollo is on fire. LemmyKilmister barely takes a breath until they get to “The Hammer” and he encourages the Glasgow crowd to shout throughout it.
The live version of “White Line Fever” sounds like getting punched in the face by an ogre – multiple times. Kilmister’s raspy growl on “Go to Hell” is the match and Fast Eddie Clarke‘s guitar is the gasoline on the track. Kilmister chastises Glasgow again before “(We Are) The Road Crew,” saying their cheering is so lame that they “sound like Leo Sayer,” which only gets the Scots to go crazier. Of course, this live version of “Ace of Spades” is liable to set fire to your face. They close the main set with venue-shattering versions of “Overkill,” “Bomber,” and “Motörhead.”
It’s a stunning reissue of an already stunning record. Don’t miss this if you’re a fan of Motörhead of NWOBHM.
It was the end of the first leg of Earthless‘ U.S. tour, and it turned out to be guitarist Isaiah Mitchell‘s birthday. It also turned out to be another stunning performance by them.
My friend and I go to the venue too late to see the first opening band, Ancient Days, but we did catch The Heavy Company (otherwise known as THC) play a blues-infused rock set that impressed the enthusiastic crowd.
The Heavy Company
Earthless played for a little over an hour, and that set was three songs. If you’re new to Earthless, you need to know that two of those songs were over twenty minutes long, and the third was nearly fifteen minutes long. They don’t skimp anything during a show. They give all every time. I yelled, “I can’t feel my face.” after the end of the second track.
L-R: Isaiah Mitchell, Mario Rubalcaba, Mike Eginton
It’s difficult to describe how much heavy power they unleash. I was reminded during their performance of an analogy my wife heard once about a full jar. Take a large, earthenware jar and fill it with rocks. Is the jar full? No. It may seem like it is, but you could fill the space between the rocks with water. Full now? No, because you could slowly add sand to the jar to absorb the water and take up all the remaining space. Now the jar is so heavy you’d need Hulk-like strength to lift it.
Now change the venue to a music venue that holds about 200 people and change the rocks to Isaiah Mitchell’s bass riffs, the water to Mario Rubalcaba’s drum fills, and the sand to Mike Eginton’s heavy bass riffs and you’ll get the idea.
Today, Australia’s prolific atom-splitting polymaths King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard exceed even the most hyperbolic projections and announce the upcoming release of THREE new albums, all set for flight during the month of October via their own KGLW label. The first to drop will be the Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava, out October 7th. Following that will be Laminated Denim,dropping somewhat unconventionally on October 12th, a Wednesday. Finally, on October 28th the band will release Changes, their 5th album of the year. Additionally, they have shared a video for one of the songs off the first of this album triumvirat, “Ice V.” This will all be happening during the height of Gizz’s North American Takeover, as the band traverses across the continent playing their largest venues yet, including three shows at Red Rocks Amphitheater (2 of which are sold out) and New York’s Forest Hills Stadium (where Dylan went electric, no less). As a special treat to those who come and see the band live at some of their biggest shows, limited stock of Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava will be available at their Greek Theater show in Berkeley, copies of Laminated Denim will be available at Red Rocks, and Changes can be obtained at the Orpheum in New Orleans. Additionally, bundles of all three albums can be pre-ordered here.
Things move fast in the Gizzverse, and before Stu Mackenzie and his bandmates had even completed work on their recent mammoth double album Omnium Gatherum, they’d started sketching out this next record. Their Omnium Gatherum single “The Dripping Tap” had begun life as a handful of ideas and riffs that had arisen at pre-pandemic soundchecks and demos recorded through lockdown. For this new album, however, the group wouldn’t be bringing in any pre-written songs or ideas; instead, they planned to cook up all the music together in the studio, on the spot. “All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles,” says Mackenzie. “I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.” Mackenzie selected seven titles from his list that he felt “had a vibe,” and then attached a beats-per-minute value to each one. Each song would also follow one of the seven modes of the major scale: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian.
Over seven days, the group recorded hours and hours of jams, dedicating a day to each mode and BPM. “Naturally, each day’s jams had a different flavor, because each day was in a different scale and a different BPM,” Mackenzie says. “We’d walk into the studio, set everything up, get a rough tempo going and just jam. No preconceived ideas at all, no concepts, no songs. We’d jam for maybe 45 minutes, and then all swap instruments and start again.” The group ended each day with four-to-five hours of new jams in the can. Mackenzie auditioned those jams after the sessions were done, stitching them together into the songs that feature on the 21st studio album by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (the initials of the title, IDPLMAL, spell out a mnemonic for the modes). Having assembled full working instrumentals from these jams, Mackenzie and his bandmates began overdubbing flute, organ, percussion and extra guitar over the top. The lyrics, meanwhile, were a group effort. “We had an editable Google Sheet that we were all working on,” says Mackenzie. “Most of the guys in the band wrote a lot of the lyrics, and it was my job to arrange it all and piece it together.”
The result of this radical, experimental creative process is one of the densest, most unpredictable statements from a band whose work always rockets in from unexpected angles accompanied by a wealth of subtext and theorems. But you don’t even need even a passing understanding of those Ancient Greek musical modes to appreciate this adventurous new music.
TRACKLISTING 1. Mycelium (7:36) 2. Ice V (10:16) 3. Magma (9:07) 4. Lava (6:41) 5. Hell’s Itch (13:28) 6. Iron Lung (9:05) 7. Gliese 710 (7:49)
“Laminated Denim is an anagram of Made In Timeland” – Stu Mackenzie
TRACKLISTING 1. The Land Before Timeland (15:00) 2. Hypertension (15:00)
For half a decade, the sextet has been haunted by one elusive conceptual project that had bested their every attempt (of which there had been several). They first conceived the album back in 2017, a busy year for the group. Within a mere twelve months, they recorded and released five albums of new material, but the band had intended to see out the year with a different album. That album was called Changes, and it’s finally arriving now. “I think of Changes as a song-cycle,” says band-member Stu Mackenzie. “Every song is built around this one chord progression – every track is like a variation on a theme. But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of “Exploding Suns” that’s on the finished album. But when the sessions were over, it just never felt done. It was like this idea that was in our heads, but we just couldn’t reach. We just didn’t know yet how to do what we wanted to do.”
The group abandoned Changes and instead prepared the beguiling Gumboot Soup(the last of five albums the band released in 2017), and were then quickly ensnared by about eight other outlandish ideas that sent them in infinite new directions. But the concept of Changes did not go gently into that good night. “We really have been tinkering with it since then,” Mackenzie adds.
“It’s not necessarily our most complex record, but every little piece and each sound you hear has been thought about a lot,” Mackenzie adds. Indeed, the album has gestated over a fitfully inventive five years. Originally imagined as the group’s fifth album of 2017, it has ended up the fifth album King Gizzard will release in 2022. Coincidences like this, Mackenzie says, wake up the latent numerologist within him. But the album has taught him that projects operate to their own schedules and are ready when they’re ready.
Good things come to those who wait, and the magnificent Changes is worth every one of the 2,628,000 minutes King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard invested in it. Soaked in the warm sonics of 70s R’n’B and guided by simple chord-changes that contain multitudes and rounding out another remarkable year for the group, Changes is a luminous, soft-pop marvel. Come lose yourself in its slow-cooked brilliance.
TRACKLISTING 1. Change (13:04) 2. Hate Dancin’ (3:16) 3. Astroturf (7:34) 4. No Body (3:42) 5. Gondii (4:57) 6. Exploding Suns (4:41) 7. Short Change (2:51)
TOUR DATES Fri. Sept. 30 – Perris, CA @ Desert Daze 2022 Sun. Oct. 2 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre * SOLD OUT Tue. Oct. 4 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater * SOLD OUT Wed. Oct. 5 – Vancouver, BC @ PNE Forum * Thu. Oct. 6 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre * SOLD OUT Mon. Oct. 10 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre * SOLD OUT Tue. Oct. 11 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre * SOLD OUT Fri. Oct. 14 – St Paul, MN @ The Palace Theatre * SOLD OUT Sat. Oct. 15 – Chicago, IL @ RADIUS * SOLD OUT Sun. Oct. 16 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple * Tue. Oct. 18 – Toronto, ON @ History * SOLD OUT Wed. Oct. 19 – Montreal, QC @ L’Olympia * SOLD OUT Fri. Oct. 21 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium % Sat. Oct. 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall * SOLD OUT Sun. Oct. 23 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem * SOLD OUT Mon. Oct. 24 – Asheville, NC @ Rabbit Rabbit * SOLD OUT Wed. Oct. 26 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern * SOLD OUT Thu. Oct. 27 – New Orleans, LA @ Orpheum Theater * Fri. Oct. 28 – Austin, TX @ Levitation – Stubb’s * Sat. Oct. 29 – Austin, TX @ Levitation – Stubb’s $ Mon. Oct. 31 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion # Wed. Nov. 2nd – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre # Thu. Dec. 29 – Tauranga, NZ @ Wharepai Domain Sat. Dec. 31 – Wanaka, NZ @ Rhythm & Alps Wed. Jan. 4 – Auckland, NZ @ The Matakana Country Park Thu. Apr. 6 – Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest Fri. Apr. 7 – Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest Sat. Apr. 8 – Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest Sun. Apr. 9 – Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest Mon. Apr. 10 – Byron Bay, AUS @ Byron Bay Bluesfest
* w/ Leah Senior % w/ black midi, Leah Senior $ w/ Tropical Fuck Storm, The Murlocs # w/ The Murlocs, Leah Senior
“The waiting is over! I mean When it comes to “drive-thru metal”, who needs waiters!?! With our debut album release we are about to “pop-up” all over the states for the first time in years! So head over for a triple decker helping of the cheese you need! on sale now!” – Ronald Osbourne
MAC SABBATH will return to the road this Fall to bring America another heaping helping of unhealthy – but irresistible – Drive-Thru Metal on the 2022 Pop-Up-Drive-Thru Tour, featuring special guests Speedealer, southern rock heavier and faster then anything this side of Motorhead and shoulders,and Lung, the electric cello and drums female duo, kicking off one heck of a party feast for the senses! A food fight to the death!
“MAC SABBATH will be popping up all over the States – just like in our debut release,” says the band’s perplexing clown faced frontman Ronald Osbourne. “Confusing the USA one more time!”
MAC SABBATH on tour:
09/27/22 Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
09/28/22 Goldfield Trading – Sacramento, CA – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
09/30/22 Dante’s – Portland, OR – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/01/22 El Corazón – Seattle, WA – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/04/22 Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/06/22 WAVE – Wichita, KS – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/07/22 Knuckleheads – Kansas City, MO – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/08/22 Wooly’s – Des Moines, IA – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/09/22 Fine Line – Minneapolis, MN – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/11/22 Shank Hall – Milwaukee, WI – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/12/22 Afterlife Music Hall – Lombard, IL – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/13/22 Red Flag St. – Louis, MO – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/14/22 Elevation – Grand Rapids, MI – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/15/22 Magic Bag – Ferndale, MI – with Speedealer and Lung – 18+
10/18/22 HI-FI Indy & HI-FI Annex – Indianapolis, IN – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/19/22 Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/20/22 The Crafthouse Stage & Grill – Pittsburgh, PA – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/21/22 Brooklyn Bowl – Brooklyn, NY – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/23/22 Wall Street Theater – Norwalk, CT – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
10/26/22 The Foundry – Philadelphia, PA – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/27/22 Black Cat – Washington, DC – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/28/22 Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center – Harrisburg, PA – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
10/29/22 The Underground – Charlotte, NC – with Speedealer and Lung -All Ages
10/31/22 The Grey Eagle Asheville, NC – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
11/01/22 EXIT/IN – Nashville, TN – with Speedealer and Lung – 18+
11/03/22 The Charleston Pour House – Charleston, SC – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/04/22 42nd Street Tavern/Reggies – Wilmington, NC – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/05/22 Jack Rabbits Live – Jacksonville, FL – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
11/06/22 Tuffy’s Bottle Shop/Lounge/Music Box – Sanford, FL with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/08/22 Lafayette’s Music Room – Memphis, TN – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/09/22 Chelsea’s Cafe – Baton Rouge, LA – with Speedealer and Lung – 18+
11/10/22 Zony Mash Beer Project – New Orleans, LA – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/11/22 Come and Take It Live Austin, TX – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
11/12/22 Trees – Dallas, TX – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/14/22 Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX – with Speedealer and Lung – 21+
11/15/22 RockHouse Bar & Grill – El Paso, TX – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
11/16/22 Meow Wolf – Santa Fe, NM – with Lung – 21+
11/18/22 Marquis Theater – Denver, CO – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
11/19/22 Mesa Theater – Grand Junction, CO – with Speedealer and Lung – All Ages
12/16/22 Vinnie’s Bar & Grill with TBA – Concord, CA – 21+
12/17/22 The Catalyst with TBA – Santa Cruz, CA 16+
Medicine Singers announce a fall headlining tour and present a live video of “Sunrise (Rumble),” a standout track from Medicine Singers , their self-titled debut album out now on Stone Tapes/ Joyful Noise Recordings.
Recently highlighted in a New York Times article as a group on the forefront of Native experimental music, the Medicine Singers’ groundbreaking debut LP acts as a guided tour de force of decades of musical genres influenced by Native American music, and their live show remains the stuff of legend. The Medicine Singers often set up in-the-round, and go into a trance-inducing set where the walls between band and spectator – as well as between psychedelic rock and shamanic chants – are blurred. Full dates are listed below and tickets are on sale tomorrow, Friday August 19th.
The Medicine Singers’ tour kicks off with a very special “immersive” performance on September 24 at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works to celebrate the release of Medicine Singers and the launch of Stone Tapes, Yonatan Gat’s eclectic new label. The show will be opened by two site-specific duo performances from Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) & Hassan Ben Jafaar (Innov Gnawa) and Laraaji & Mamady Kouyate (Bembeya Jazz) performing inside the Charles Atlas video installation in Pioneer Works’ main hall, followed by a special Medicine Singers 10-piece band featuring jaimie branch, Thor Harris, Lee Ranaldo, Laraaji and Gat.
Half a decade after the spur-of-the-moment story of how the musicians first met and unraveled their sound on an unsuspecting audience during SXSW 2017 when Gat saw Eastern Medicine Singers play on the street and invited the band to spontaneously join his show – the collaboration between the musicians reaches a climax with this breathtaking debut album as Medicine Singers, helping pave the way to this year’s rising wave of Native contributions to experimental music – shining a spotlight on guest vocalists representing indigenous nations from outside of the Northeastern Woodland tribal area. “Where else can you get all these different native people singing together on an album?” bandleader Daryl Back Eagle Jamieson asked. “On this album you have east, west, north and south all coming together. That’s why we say it’s medicine.”
For Jamieson, this album is more than a collection of songs, it’s a vessel of culture, history and language; a symbol of the strength and creativity of the Eastern Algonquin people in contemporary American society. “I want to show people not only that our Indian culture is just as good as the rest of the culture that’s out there, but also that the two can exist together, side by side.”
Medicine Singers Tour Dates Sat. Sept. 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Pioneer Works (RECORD RELEASE / STONE TAPES LABEL LAUNCH) * Wed. Sept. 28 – Troy, NY @ No Fun Thu. Sept. 29 – Montreal, QC @ Pop Montreal Fri. Sept. 30 – Toronto, ON @ Vashe ZDorov’ye Sat. Oct. 1 – Cleveland, OH @ Happy Dog West Sun. Oct. 2 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle Mon. Oct. 3 – Indianapolis, IN @ Square Cat Sat, Oct 8 – Washington, DC @ Down in the Reeds Festival
* w/ Lee Ranaldo & Hassan Ben Jafaar (Duo), Laraaji & Mamady Kourate (Duo)
Since Midnight Oil’s new album Resist debuted at #1 early this year, the legendary Australian band has toured around Australia, North America, and then Europe, on their last concert tour. The final leg of this epic run kicks off this week at the Mundi Mundi Bash near Broken Hill followed by rescheduled gigs in Cairns, Darwin, New Zealand, Perth and Canberra to make up for various climate and Covid disruptions earlier this year. In addition, this final leg will include shows at Broome’s Stompem Ground Festival (after a 20 year hiatus) and a new WA gig in Busselton (see below for all details).
Today, the last four dates of this tour were revealed with Midnight Oil announcing two uniquely intimate extra shows in both Melbourne and Sydney. A portion of proceeds from each of these new gigs will be donated to environmental and Indigenous causes and general public tickets will go on sale 10am local time on Monday 22 August via: midnightoil.com/tour
Melbourne will finally experience Midnight Oil playing their classic album 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 in its entirety at the Palais Theatre on Monday September 12 under the banner “One For The Planet”. The band had originally announced this special idea for a benefit show back in March, but Covid got in the way so, like their other cancelled gigs, they are now making good on that earlier promise.
Two nights later, on Wednesday September 14, the Oils will play a final show at the Palais under the banner “One For The Road”. This extra Melbourne date will see the band performing the entire show (ie: no support) and delivering an extended set that will include classics from every Midnight Oil album and EP across their storied career.
Sydney will experience these same two special shows a few weeks later, as “RESIST: The Final Tour” ends with a bang back in the band’s hometown. “One For The Planet” (featuring “10-1” in its entirety) will be staged at the Luna Park Big Top on Wednesday September 28. Then “One For The Road” (an extended concert including classics from every album and EP) will celebrate the end of Midnight Oil’s touring career on the Labour Day public holiday – Monday October 3 – at the famous Hordern Pavilion where the band staged some of their most memorable Sydney gigs back in the day.
“The shows we’ve just done overseas have been some of the best and most enjoyable of our career”, said Midnight Oil guitarist/keyboardist, Jim Moginie. “Every gig on this last tour has had extra emotion around it so we’re looking forward to bringing those feelings back home again.”
“We’ve always supported causes that we believe are important during our tours so these four extra gigs are partly a way of doing that”, explains frontman, Peter Garrett. “They will allow the band and the audience to have a different experience each night by digging deep into the back catalogue in venues that are a bit smaller than the ones we’ve usually been playing in over recent years.”
“From the opening track on our first album through to the last song on our new one, we’ve always been blessed to have fans who are really passionate about what we do”, observed drummer Rob Hirst. “One For The Planet and “One For The Road” are our way of acknowledging that connection over 45 years. We’ve all shared an amazing journey together, so we want to celebrate that by playing something for everyone in places that feel special”.
The Midnight Oil fan pre-sale for these new shows kick off from 10am local time (staggered times – see below) on Thursday 18 August before the General Public on sale starting 10am local on Monday 22 August. Tickets from midnightoil.com/tour
The newly announced RESIST show at Barnard Park, Busselton, WA with special guest Regurgitator on Friday 23 September now joins the existing RESIST shows at Munro Martin Parklands, Cairns with special guests Busby Marou on Thursday 25 August, Darwin Convention Centre, Darwin with special guest Leah Flanagan on Saturday 27 August and Fellows Oval – ANU Campus, Canberra with special guests King Stingray, Emily Wurramara (solo) and Moaning Lisa on Saturday 1 October. Tickets via: midnightoil.com/tour
The band’s a day on the green Nikola Estate, Swan Valley, WA show with special guests Goanna and Stephen Pigram on Sunday 25 September is on sale now.
