Beat 1741

KATIE NOONAN

The award-winning artist returns with her 30th studio album, Alone But All One.

RISING ⠃ MUSIC 27 MAY

— 08 JUNE

A FESTIVAL OF NEW ART, MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE IN THE HEART OF NAARM/MELBOURNE

LIL’ KIM • KAE TEMPEST

DANIEL AVERY • SEUN KUTI & EGYPT 80

SAINT LEVANT • ADRIAN SHERWOOD

CATE LE BON • DRY CLEANING

SAUL WILLIAMS MEETS CARLOS NIÑO & FRIENDS

WEDNESDAY • TR/ST • ANAIIS

RAVEN CHACON • CHANEL BEADS

THE CONGOS • KAHIL EL’ZABAR • SORRY

DISCOVERY ZONE • THE BATS

ELIAS B RØNNENFELT • SAICOBAB

GIL SCOTT-HERON BY BRIAN JACKSON & YASIIN BEY AND MANY MORE

5

URGENT TIMES. EMERGENT FUTURES.

PRINT EDITOR

Kaya Martin

EDITOR

Lucas Radbourne

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Frankie Anderson-Byrne

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Riley McDonald

GIG GUIDE

Jacob Colliver

CONTRIBUTORS

Kosa Monteith, Dom Lepore, August Billy, Luke Carlino, MJ Kim, Bryget Chrisfield and Jacob McCormack

FOR ADVERTISING OR SPONSORED CONTENT ENQUIRIES advertise@furstmedia.com.au

ACCOUNTS accounts@furstmedia.com.au

DISTRIBUTION distribution@furstmedia.com.au

PUBLISHER

Furst Media Pty Ltd

FOUNDER

Rob Furst

EDITORIAL NOTE

The fur coats have been taken out of storage. The cauldrons of mulled wine have found their places behind bars across the city. The landlord’s about to get his annual text to come and fix the split system. It’s winter, baby!

Æ And while no one’s too excited about the 5pm sunsets, Melbourne sure knows how to do the season right. Think sizzling meats and sweet treats at the night markets, regional weekend getaways, and quirked-up arts festivals welcoming us into the alluring glow (cough, RISING).

With features on Franga bangers The Gnomes, Hall of Famers Vika & Linda, hip hop icon Brian Jackson, electro duo Purity Ring and plenty more to check out, we hope this edition warms you from the inside out. And if not, you can always use it as kindling. We won’t know the difference.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF TRADITIONAL OWNERS

Our magazine is published on the lands of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and we wish to acknowledge them as Traditional Owners. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.

it at your venue email distribution@furstmedia.com.au

ST KILDA FILM FESTIVAL RETURNS WITH RECORDBREAKING PROGRAM

Australia’s longest-running short film festival takes over the Palais Theatre, the Astor Theatre and St Kilda Town Hall from 4 to 14 June, featuring nearly 200 films. Hugo Weaving, Kat Stewart, Sophie Wilde and Smiling Friends creator Michael Cusack all feature, alongside 15 awards. Free filmmaker development day The Big Picture runs on 6 June.

RECLINK COMMUNITY CUP RETURNS TO VICTORIA PARK

Now in its 33rd year, the Reclink Community Cup is back at Victoria Park in Abbotsford on 14 June. The Megahertz face off against the Rockdogs from 11am to 7pm, with C.O.F.F.I.N featuring King Gizzard’s Ambrose KennySmith and Kim Salmon’s Smoked Salmon playing in a stacked live music program.

LA LA LAND GETS THE FULL ORCHESTRAL TREATMENT

Celebrating the film’s 10th anniversary, La La Land In Concert screens the six-time Oscar winner with a live orchestra and jazz ensemble performing Justin Hurwitz’s score in real time. Conductor George Ellis takes the podium at Hamer Hall on 6 and 8 June.

UKULELE DEATH

SQUAD UNLEASH EP TOUR ON HOWLER

Self-described as the most dangerous ukulele band on the planet, the eight-piece Adelaide collective brings their new EP Essentially My Life is a Disaster to Howler on 13 June. Expect genre-hopping chaos spanning Australiana disco, grungy blues and brass-fuelled Balkan mania before they head to Europe.

SCIENCE GALLERY OPENS SPRAWLING SURVIVAL EXHIBITION

EMERGENCE[Y] at Science Gallery Melbourne spans living vertical farms, fungal fashion, coral soundscapes and AI-driven political experiments. A major new commission from Patricia Piccinini anchors the show, created following a year-long residency with stem cell researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Free to visit, it’ll run from 6 June to 5 December at the University of Melbourne.

JEREMIAH WATKINS BRINGS

UNPREDICTABLE STANDUP TO MELBOURNE

The American comedian behind Amazon Prime special Family Reunion and viral YouTube series Stand-Up On The Spot plays The Comic’s Lounge on 28 June. Watkins voices the Joker on DC Superhero Girls and has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, HBO’s Crashing and Netflix’s Historical Roasts.

GEORDIE GREEP UNLEASHES THE NEW SOUND ON MELBOURNE

The former black midi frontman brings his debut solo album to Melbourne this July as part of a four-city Australian run. Recorded across two continents with over 30 session musicians, The New Sound throws jazz-funk, theatrical scores and full-band eruptions into a blender. No two nights are designed to land the same way.

BOBBY LEE’S FIRSTEVER SOLO TOUR HITS MELBOURNE IN AUGUST

After more than 30 years of performing, the MADtv cast member and Bad Friends and TigerBelly co-host has never headlined a full-scale solo tour. The Finally Tour hits the Plenary at MCEC on 14 August. His debut comedy special, executive-produced with Bill Burr, is streaming on Disney+.

+ CATHERINE K AM AL CLAY J GLADSTONE & NTH RD’S ‘72 HOUR HANGOVER TOUR’ - WITH KEVIN SILVESTER + A STUDY IN RED ZIPPER ‘HIKO’ AND ‘EAR’ DUAL SINGLE RELEASE - WITH PROGRAM + THE BOLT ONS + VISION 200 + DIBBER DOBBER

ARVO - THE HUMAN FACTOR - WITH EYES GLOW DEAD + AND THE CLOUDS MOVED ON KINGS BDAY EVE KINGS EVE - OPEN TILL 3AM - DJS FOR FREE IN THE GARDEN MODERN HEAVEN EU/UK TOUR FAREWELL PARTY - WITH SPECIAL GUESTS LETTERS TO LIONS ‘BREAKING BREAD’ TOUR - WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE MOTION BELOW - A FINAL EXHIBITION - WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

ARVO - TWISTED FIX - WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

PRINCES HILL SECONDARY COLLEGE - YR 9 MUSIC NIGHT THORNBACK ‘BLUR’ SINGLE LAUNCH - WITH DIOPSIDE + PUNCHBOWL

VIRTUES ‘DEATH BLOOM’ EAST COAST TOUR - WITH BOUND IN FEAR (UK) + PRAY4ME

RENEE NACCARI ‘PROVOCATIVE MOOD SWINGS’ ALBUM LAUNCH - WITH MICHAEL K AY + K AIYAH MERCEDES

ARVO - CHLOE PARCHÉ ‘ SIT NEXT TO NELLIE’ TOUR - WITH PEACH FUZ Z + ERICA AVENUE SUNDAY SCHOOL - $7 SCHOONERS OF L

YUKI CHIBA (JPN) THU 11 JUN

BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT (USA) FRI 19 JUN RYAN OAKES (USA) SAT 20 JUN

GO-JO: THE GO-JO VARIETY SHOW SAT 27 JUN

12/07 BEN KWELLER (USA) SELLING FAST 30/07 DAYA 31/07 WEENED 01/08 THE PRETTY LITTLES 02/08 MOTTA MAADI MUSIC

06/08 HUMBE

14/08 SUNK LOTO SOLD OUT

15/08 THE ANGELS

22/08 BY STORM (FKA INJURY RESERVE)

28/08 MONTAIGNE

29/08 THIRD EYE & KHAN

11/09 SHRED FEST 2026

12/09 SWERVEDRIVER (UK) SELLING FAST

29/09 CANDLEMASS (SWE) SELLING FAST 30/09 CANDLEMASS (SWE) SOLD OUT 16/10 NATHAN EVANS AND THE SAINT PHNX BAND SELLING FAST

MILLIGAN SELLING FAST

22/11 REV. KRISS HADES 10/12 CULTURE WARS

01/06 ‘SOCIAL SANCTUARY’ w MAEVE GRIEVE, GUTHRIE + PLANET: PAIN 03/06 DRIFTING CLOUDS SELLING FAST 04/06 DRIFTING CLOUDS SOLD OUT 05/06 SECOND HAND HIGH 06/06 RUBY JONES 07/06 WARNER BROTHERS RESIDENCY (LATE MATINEE) 08/06 ‘SOCIAL SANCTUARY’ w CRY CYCLOPS TAM VANTAGE + LAURA NORDA 11/06 THE BATS (NZ) SOLD OUT 12/06 ROD COOTE 13/06 JORDAN HART 14/06 WARNER BROTHERS RESIDENCY (LATE MATINEE) 17/06 INCANTATION (USA) 19/06 JOHN SPLITHOFF SOLD OUT 20/06 ULLAH SELLING FAST

21/06 WARNER BROTHERS RESIDENCY (LATE MATINEE) 25/06 CHASING GHOSTS (FAREWELL SHOW) SELLING FAST 26/06 CHASING GHOSTS (FAREWELL SHOW) SOLD OUT 28/06 WARNER BROTHERS RESIDENCY (LATE MATINEE)

SLAYYYTER’S SOLD-OUT WORLD TOUR FINALLY HITS MELBOURNE

After two capacity weekends on Coachella’s Mojave Stage and a fully sold-out North American leg, Slayyyter brings the WOR$T GIRL IN THE WORLD TOUR to Melbourne in August. Her early viral track Daddy AF crossed into the mainstream after featuring in a key scene in the Oscar’s Best Picture winner Anora.

VIOLENT SOHO BREAK HIATUS WITH FORUM MELBOURNE SHOW

The Brisbane four-piece went on an indefinite hiatus in 2022 after close to two decades. Now they’re stepping back out with a headline show at the Forum on 18 September alongside a 10th anniversary vinyl pressing of number one ARIA album WACO. Beddy Rays and Secret World support.

THE DAMNED BRING 50TH ANNIVERSARY FAREWELL TO MELBOURNE

Half a century of chaos, and The Damned are still standing. The pioneering British punk outfit bring their farewell tour to Melbourne this September. The band hold a stack of firsts in UK punk history – first punk single with New Rose, first punk album with Damned Damned Damned, and first British punk band to tour the US.

DERMOT KENNEDY ANNOUNCES EIGHT-DATE OUTDOOR AUSTRALIAN TOUR

The Irish singer-songwriter brings his third album The Weight of the Woods to Australia this November. Kennedy became the first Irish solo artist to land three consecutive number one debut albums on the UK charts. He’ll hit Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on 21 November.

OLIVER TREE BRINGS MULTIMEDIA CHAOS TO THE FORUM

The genre-defying artist has announced a six-date Australian and New Zealand tour behind his fourth album Love You Madly, Hate You Badly, a 17-track record written and produced entirely by himself across 82 countries. It’ll hit the Forum on 3 October.

THE RING IN CONCERT BRINGS LIVE ORCHESTRA TO THE PLENARY

The 2002 psychological horror classic screens at the Plenary on 5 November while the Australian Pops Orchestra performs Hans Zimmer’s score live. Conductor Sarah-Grace Williams guides the musicians through the film’s unsettling compositions in real time.

JACK JOHNSON, BEN HARPER AND JOHN BUTLER UNITE

Jack Johnson’s SURFILMUSIC tour brings three decades of combined catalogue to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on 17 November. Ben Harper and John Butler will each perform solo acoustic sets alongside Johnson’s full band, marking the first time all three have shared a bill.

VICTORIA’S FILM INDUSTRY KEEPS PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT

Daniel Kaluuya’s latest A24 project Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel is filming in Victoria, adding to a growing list of international productions choosing the state. With over $50 million flowing through the local industry, Melbourne’s screen sector continues its upward run.

IAN MOSS AND TROY CASSAR-DALEY HIT REGIONAL VICTORIA

The Together Alone 2026 tour takes the two Australian music icons through 16 regional centres from October to December, winding through Victorian towns with acoustic guitars, swapping catalogues and trading stories from the road.

AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS LEAD APRA NOMINATIONS

Melbourne’s own Amyl and the Sniffers won Song of the Year (Jerkin’), Most Performed Rock Work, and Songwriter of the Year at the 2026 APRA Music Awards, continuing their run as one of the country’s most feted acts.

SIX LEGENDS ENTER THE ARIA HALL OF FAME

The 2026 ARIA Hall of Fame class has been announced, recognising six artists who have shaped Australian music across genres and generations: Gurrumul, Jenny Morris, Kate Ceberano, Spiderbait, The Living End and Vika & Linda.

EAT THE BEAT TRANSFORMS CBD BUILDING INTO SUPERCLUB

A new, large-scale live music and nightclub venue has just opened inside a heritage building at 546 Collins Street. Eat the Beat is delivering a multi-level experience combining live performance, DJs and late-night programming.

POOF DOOF LAUNCHES ITS OWN RECORD LABEL

Melbourne’s biggest queer club night has expanded beyond the dancefloor with the launch of its own record label, marking a new chapter for the long-running institution that’s been a cornerstone of the city’s LGBTQIA+ nightlife.

RISING ADDS A FED SQUARE TAKEOVER TO ITS 2026 PROGRAM

The latest RISING 2026 additions span a huge projection at Fed Square to a ramen setup built for two, plus late-night dining, artist talks and a free meeting point for musicians, audiences and industry. The full festival program, which runs from 27 May to 8 June, takes over squares, bars, restaurants and exhibition spaces.

KICK ON FEST IS BACK WITH A BRAND NEW EIGHT-ACT

LINEUP

Returning to The Leadbeater Hotel on 18 July, the 2026 edition of Kick On Fest features The Carp Factory, Arabella & The Heist, The Salmon Sisters, Dolls, Billy Cart, Mudbath, Cass Aware and Fur Blossom; eight acts keeping it local, loud and very much alive.

LAMB OF GOD AND TRIVIUM ARE COMING TO AUSTRALIA THIS OCTOBER

Two of modern metal’s most enduring acts have announced a co-headline arena tour, marking Lamb of God’s first full Australian tour run in close to a decade and Trivium’s first return since Knotfest 2023. The heavyweights will hit five cities across the country, joined by Glasgow’s Bleed From Within as special guests.

17 OF VICTORIA’S BEST WINERIES ARE THROWING ONE MASSIVE FESTIVAL

Roam Rutherglen is making its return across the King’s Birthday long weekend, with 17 participating wineries across one of Australia’s most celebrated wine regions ready to welcome a weekend of bold outfits, great wine and good times.

FREDDIE GIBBS HEADLINES NEW FESTIVAL MOVE MY WAY

Astral People have unveiled Move My Way, a vibrant new community music festival touching down across Sydney and Melbourne in October. The event transforms Carriageworks and PICA into multi-stage playgrounds headlined by Ezra Collective, Freddie Gibbs, Kokoroko and Sampa the Great.

HEALESVILLE SANCTUARY IS HOSTING NIGHT SKY TOURS

Healesville Sanctuary has launched Sky Country Tours, an immersive new stargazing experience led by Gomeroi astrophysicist Krystal De Napoli. The tours take guests behind the scenes into the beautiful Coranderrk Bushland, walking through native forest to the shores of Lake Coranderrk.

HSBC SPANISH & LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL IS BACK

Kicking off 10 June, the 2026 HSBC Spanish & Latin American Film Festival spans everything from sweeping historical epics to frothy romantic comedies. This year’s centrepiece is Sundays (Los domingos), a Spanish drama about a family thrown into crisis when their 17-year-old daughter announces she wants to become a nun.

PREPARE TO BE MOVED BY RISING’S INAUGURAL AUSTRALIAN DANCE BIENNALE

From 27 May to 8 June, RISING will come alive with emotion in motion as some of the world’s major dancers and choreographers strut their stuff. Featuring a slew of events spread across 13 days, the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale will see dancers busting moves in theatres, town halls and public squares around Melbourne.

WINTER NIGHT MARKET RETURNS WITH S’MORES, MULLED WINE AND FIRES

Melbourne’s favourite midweek winter tradition is back, and it’s bringing serious warmth to the city’s coldest nights. The Winter Night Market returns to Queen Victoria Market every Wednesday from 3 June to 26 August 2026, transforming the sheds and laneways into a glowing open-air wonderland of food, music and connection.

LUNA PARK IS THROWING AN AFTER-DARK PRIDE TAKEOVER THIS JUNE

Luna Pride 2026 is back, bigger and more immersive than its inaugural 2025 outing, transforming the entire park into a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community. We’re talking unlimited rides, live entertainment, DJs, drag, comedy and glitter.

A3 FESTIVAL HAS ANNOUNCED ITS BIGGEST LINEUP YET

A3 Festival is heading back to Lardner Park in Victoria for its third edition, running 27 to 30 November. The electronic music festival has built a reputation for treating the entire weekend as one cohesive environment: sound, lighting, spatial design and movement all working together rather than music just happening on stages in a paddock.

PORT MELBOURNE IS THROWING A MASSIVE FREE MUSIC CRAWL

The free Port Melbourne Music Crawl returns on 7 June, transforming Bay Street and the surrounding precinct into a walkable live music experience across 10 venues. More than 20 acts rotate through pubs, wine bars, delis and live rooms covering everything from South African jazz and New Orleans brass to electronic dance music, alt-country, indie rock and French yé-yé.

Wesley Anne Wesley Anne

RISING 2026

WORDS BY KOSA MONTEITH

RISING has earned a reputation for bringing bold, strange, challenging and truly beautiful international acts into their program, and 2026 is no exception.

Æ RISING features masked dolls triggering a candlelit cascade of sculptural movement. Blood, dance and the world’s end. Exploration of religion and identity with an Adidas danceoff. Anti-capitalist comedy cabaret. ‘Anti-biography’ of the politicised Arab experience. Clear the calendar. These are the top picks for dance, theatre and some things much more unusual in RISING’s global performance lineup.

A YEAR WITHOUT SUMMER

Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger delivers musical comedy with a scalpel edge, a body horror song and dance. The performance provocateur’s A Year Without Summer is equal parts moving and unsettling.

Fresh from representing Austria at the Venice Biennale, where her installation Seaworld Venice, featuring performers suspended naked inside a giant bronze bell, flooding the Austrian Pavilion with dystopian visions of climate catastrophe, is currently one of the most talked-about and widely shared works of the entire exhibition, she brings that same fearless, boundary-dissolving physicality to Melbourne.

From 1816’s catastrophic eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, coexistent with the conception of Mary Shelley’s monster, to our present world teetering on the edge of a self-made techno-apocalypse, Holzinger digs her claws into the world of medical science, destruction and creation.

We witness new monsters, robots prowling the stage, the hungry, spewing beast of AI and the bioengineering of new bodies. Sex, death, blood – and still we dance and sing.

Musical theatre for the world’s end.

In mixed German and English (with English subtitles), you will be drawn on a timejump journey of spectacular doom, here at the edge of apocalypse.

Monopol Magazine named Holzinger the most influential artist of the year. Right now, she may be the most talked-about director in Europe.

FYI: 16+ performance, those aged 16-18 need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Includes nudity, simulated self-injury, explicit sexual depictions, simulated bodily fluids, needles, strobe lights, haze, loud music and smoking.

VOYAGE INTO INFINITY

Æ Brooklyn-based Narcissister is one of the most enigmatic artists of our era. Her films have premiered at Sundance, and her work has toured festivals, nightclubs and galleries worldwide for two decades. This is her first visit to Australia.

Eternally masked, whirling through costumes, genders and cultural signifiers overlaid on her African American/ Sephardic Jewish identity, Narcissister comes to RISING with a performance installation of staggering proportions.

Three Lolita-like dolls set magnificent machines in motion before the live audience. Magic meets the Rube Goldberg machine, and objects cascade, collide, twist and tumble in an arresting performance orchestrated by a mysterious living caricature.

By candlelight, the world moves and collapses.

The huge set and seating will take place on the entire floor of Festival Hall for two nights only.

FYI: 16+ only. Nudity, fire, pyrotechnics, flashing lights and haze.

FESTIVAL HALL 4 & 5 JUN

HARD TO BE SOFT: A BELFAST PRAYER

Æ Presented as part of the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale, Oona Doherty’s Hard to be Soft: A Belfast Prayer is an explosive contemporary piece exploring the lives of the Northern Irish capital. In four episodes, we are taken into the human experience of the everyday, its people, passions, conflicts and cultural identity.

Choreographed with a deft touch, yet passionate in its vignettes and swagger, the show offers mingled influences of club culture and European avant-garde with music by DJ David Holmes (whose credits include Killing Eve and Ocean’s Eleven). Religion, trauma, machismo and raw emotion are entwined in a work of furious, superb skill and empathy.

The Guardian named it the number one UK dance show of 2019. Doherty has since won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale Danza.

FYI: Not recommended for under 14, themes of violence, substance abuse and suicide, with partial nudity.

MERLYN THEATRE, MALTHOUSE THEATRE 27–30 MAY

NOWHERE

Æ In his one-man show Nowhere, Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, United 93, Green Zone, The Crown) explores his modern Arab identity and the events that have defined it, from the Egyptian revolution to 9/11 and the war in Gaza, in a multimedia show that has earned critical acclaim.

In Abdalla’s identity and body, the political and personal are inextricably entwined, agency is a fraught idea, and belonging feels contingent and precarious. Ultimately, it’s more than Abdalla’s “anti-biography”: it’s a heartfelt, impassioned message for peace in a world at war.

The show received five stars at the Edinburgh Fringe 2025, where it was one of the most talked-about shows of the festival.

WE COME TO COLLECT: A FLIRTATION, WITH CAPITALISM

Æ Sharp, incisive, unexpected and fabulous. In we come to collect, Jenn Kidwell and ASL artist Brandon KazenMaddox burst onto stage to skewer global capitalism and all its dreadful follies in this hilarious, chaotic art-comedy.

A carnivalesque dive into the topics of our time, it weaves stand-up and performance art into a snarling, splendid manifesto in leopard-print. From darkness in the state of our world comes delight – at least, for a night.

Kidwell is an Obie Award-winning artist whose previous show, Underground Railroad Game, swept the awards circuit and won the Edinburgh Fringe First Award in 2018.

FYI: Recommended for 14+, with strong language and distressing scenes, as well as loud music and flashing lights.

MERLYN THEATRE, MALTHOUSE THEATRE 2–6 JUN

FYI: This one’s for ages 12 and up. ASL-Auslan interpreted performances on Saturdays.

THE SHOWROOM, ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE 27 MAY–7 JUN

RISING

WHERE: MELBOURNE

WHEN: 27 MAY–8 JUN

BEAT IS A PROUD MEDIA PARTNER OF RISING

FESTIVAL GUIDE

RISING

Melbourne’s flagship festival of new art, music and performance wraps up its 12-night winter takeover across theatres, galleries and public spaces. The 2026 program features more than 100 events and 376 artists, including hip-hop icon Lil’ Kim at Festival Hall, postpunk outfit Dry Cleaning, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and a massive free public dance event at Fed Square from Royal Family Dance Crew.

MELBOURNE

NATIONAL CELTIC FOLK FESTIVAL

MORNINGTON WINTER MUSIC FESTIVAL

Main Street Mornington transforms into a multi-venue music crawl across the King’s Birthday long weekend, with street corners, bars and restaurants hosting live performances from jazz, blues, soul and R&B acts. Free outdoor stages and roving performers spill into the street while venues run late-night sets, creating a walkable, venue-hopping festival that blends local talent with a strong community feel.

LIGHTSCAPE

Melbourne’s award-winning immersive winter light trail returns for its fifth season with 15 new and returning installations across a 2.1-kilometre after-dark walk through the gardens. This year’s highlights include the Australian premiere of Bifrost, a 20-arch tunnel of flowing light by French studio Pitaya, and Firefly Field by Dutch studio TOER, where 200 glowing points dart above the grass. A reimagined 30-metre Winter Cathedral and a circular spiral Fire Garden of 150 candles round out the program.

ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS 12 JUN–2 AUG

27 MAY–8 JUN

Australia’s premier Celtic and folk festival celebrates its 21st anniversary over the King’s Birthday long weekend, transforming the bayside town of Portarlington into four days of music, dance, theatre, storytelling and games across more than 10 venues. The 2026 lineup features more than 60 acts, including Irish siblings Séamus and Caoimhe (fresh off the RTÉ Folk Awards) and Dublin’s Saltaire.

PORTARLINGTON 5–8 JUN

WOODEND WINTER ARTS FESTIVAL

Australia’s longest-running winter arts festival returns for its 21st year in the heart of the Macedon Ranges with a four-day program of classical and contemporary music, jazz, words and ideas. Highlights include ARIA Award-winning pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska and composer Elena Kats-Chernin performing their chart-topping four-hands collaboration Ancient Letters.

WOODEND 5–8 JUN

MORNINGTON 5–8 JUN

TELETECH 2026

Manchester hard techno powerhouse Teletech returns for its second Australian run of 2026, landing in Melbourne at PICA on 6 June with a five-act international lineup led by Italian live duo 999999999. Known for hardware-only sets and relentless BPMs, they’re joined by DJ Cringey, Natte Visstick, Cara Elizabeth and Onlynumbers for a night of industrial techno, strobe-heavy production and full-scale warehouse energy.

PICA

6 JUN

HYPERAVE 2026

Symbiotic’s Hyperave returns over the June long weekend with a laser-focused (literally) production upgrade, promising a record-breaking 360° light and laser show inside PICA. The lineup leans into trance and harder styles, featuring international heavyweights including Gareth Emery, Cosmic Gate, John O’Callaghan and Jeffrey Sutorius (Dash Berlin classics set).

PICA, MELBOURNE

CASTLEMAINE DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL

Held at the historic Theatre Royal, this mid-winter film festival delivers a tightly curated program of Australian and international documentaries alongside Q&As, panel discussions and live events. Running across a compact weekend format, it’s built around conversation as much as screening, pairing non-fiction storytelling with industry talks, community engagement and late-night social events.

CASTLEMAINE 26–28 JUN

DANGEROUS GOODS XXL

Dangerous Goods’ flagship XXL event returns for its seventh Melbourne edition, scaling up to Melbourne Showgrounds with a 15-artist lineup and a three-stage warehouse-style setup. Early lineup announcements include SLVL, OMAKS and USH.

7 JUN

MELBOURNE SHOWGROUNDS

27 JUN

STAGE GUIDE

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

The final performances of Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Tennessee Williams’ haunting memory play are happening this June. Alison Whyte plays Amanda Wingfield, the heartbreakingly hopeful mother clinging to the past while trying to control the future, with Tim Draxl as her son Tom, teetering between obligation and escape. MTC’s first staging of the work in two decades, this is an intimate portrait of a family held together by illusion and slowly falling apart under its weight.

SOUTHBANK THEATRE UNTIL 5 JUN

WAITRESS

The Australian premiere of Broadway’s smash-hit musical continues its Melbourne season with Natalie Bassingthwaighte as Jenna, a small-town waitress and expert pie maker longing to escape her rocky marriage. Featuring an uplifting score by Grammy winner Sara Bareilles and direction by Tony winner Diane Paulus, this feel-good story of resilience, friendship and second chances is brought to life by a trailblazing female-led creative team. Gabriyel Thomas, Mackenzie Dunn, Rob Mills and John Waters round out the cast in a production that has been packing the house since May.

HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE UNTIL 19 JUL

HOUSE OF ROT: GREY GARDENS

Paul Capsis and Adam Noviello bring a cabaret invocation of Big and Little Edie to the Merlyn for three nights only. Created by Dino Dimitriadis and Victoria Falconer for Green Door Theatre Company, this is part unholy communion, part elegy in heels, centred on two eccentric recluses living in a house slowly falling in on itself. Capsis (Cabaret) and Noviello (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) are two of Australia’s most magnetic actors – together they promise something between devotion and derangement. Beauty fades, madness sings.

MALTHOUSE 18–20 JUN

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE* (*SORT OF)

The Olivier Award-winning musical comedy sensation makes its Australian premiere. Five women take on every role in Isobel McArthur’s irreverent but affectionate retelling of Austen’s most iconic love story, set to pop classics including Young Hearts Run Free, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain. Amy Lehpamer, Zoe Ioannou, Kaori MaedaJudge, Ruby Shannon and Teo Vergara star in a production that has been described as a joy-bomb of heart, humour and unstoppable energy. Melbourne gets it first before it heads to the Sydney Opera House.

ATHENAEUM THEATRE FROM 18 JUN

BANGARRA DANCE THEATRE: SHELTERING

Bangarra’s 2026 national tour arrives in Melbourne with Sheltering, a triple bill of works that honour the company’s past while looking to the future. Keeping Grounded explores our energetic connection to ancestral land, Brown Boys is a moving meditation on First Nations masculinity, and Sheoak draws on the resilience and deep cultural meaning of its namesake tree. Led by artistic director Frances Rings, the company arrives at Arts Centre Melbourne fresh off being awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance at the Venice Biennale – the first Australian and first First Nations company to receive the honour.

ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE 18–27 JUN

AUSTRALIAN BALLET: ROMEO AND JULIET

John Cranko’s beloved adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy returns in all its sweeping, heartbreaking beauty. Prokofiev’s dramatic score powers the fierce family clashes and the luminous flare of young love, while Jürgen Rose’s opulent medieval Verona contrasts the heavy splendour of the older generation with the billowing fabrics of doomed teenage romance. Performed with Orchestra Victoria, this is one of the great narrative ballets of the 20th century and among the Australian Ballet’s most defining works.

REGENT THEATRE 6–16 JUN

AUSTRALIAN BALLET: COPLAND DANCE EPISODES

See the Australian premiere of New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck’s first full-length ballet – and the first time the work has been performed outside New York. 30 dancers perform across 22 episodes set to Aaron Copland’s vivid music, with set designs by Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson and costumes by former NYC Ballet dancer Ellen Warren. A joyful explosion of colour, athleticism and contemporary energy performed with Orchestra Victoria, this marks one of the Australian Ballet’s final productions at the Regent Theatre before its return to the refurbished Ian Potter State Theatre.

REGENT THEATRE 23 JUN–2 JUL

EDINBURGH CASTLE

Regional GUIDE

WORDS

BY

FRANKIE ANDERSON-BYRNE

FESTIVALS

NATIONAL CELTIC FOLK FESTIVAL

Prepare for four days of Celtic and folk magic on the Bellarine foreshore. More than 60 artists fill 10 venues with live music, lively sessions, markets, workshops, dance and theatre. Add cosy bars, hearty food, caber tossing, Irish hurling and a serious dose of craic, and you’re in for a blast.

PORTARLINGTON 5–8 JUN

WOODEND WINTER ARTS FESTIVAL

Classical music, jazz, opera and big ideas abound in the Macedon Ranges this June. The festival will feature ARIA-winning pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, accordion virtuoso James Crabb, Ensemble Gombert performing Monteverdi’s Vespers, and a Words and Ideas program with Hugh Mackay, David Marr and Alan Finkel.

WOODEND 5–8 JUN

ROAM RUTHERGLEN

Explore 17 cellar doors, wear your bold outfits, and have a King’s Birthday weekend you won’t forget. Hop between North East Victoria’s finest wineries via hop-on hopoff buses, dance to live music and DJs, sip Muscat cocktails, and compete in the infamous best-dressed competitions.

RUTHERGLEN 6–7 JUN

CASTLEMAINE JAZZ FESTIVAL

Now in its 10th year, this King’s Birthday weekend celebration brings diverse jazz styles to historic pubs, theatres and unique venues across Castlemaine. From swing to modern fusion, the festival fosters community warmth while boosting this vibrant Central Victorian town through the winter months.

CASTLEMAINE 6–7 JUN

DARKER DAYS FESTIVAL

Bright Brewery’s alpine winter festival returns with 10 hours of live music headlined by The Grogans, plus RAGEFLOWER, Five Buck Kid and more. Guest breweries including Garage Project and Kaiju! join the taps, alongside local wine and spirits. Expect bold brews, big fires and mountain air.

BRIGHT 20 JUN

EAST GIPPSLAND WINTER FESTIVAL

This is one of Australia’s largest winter festivals, with 100-plus events transforming towns across Victoria’s far east. There will be lantern parades, medieval bonfire nights, solstice swims, winter feasting in spectacular locations, light installations, live music and immersive art across the sprawling monthlong program.

EAST GIPPSLAND 19–30 JUN

MANSFIELD LANTERN FESTIVAL

At the foot of snow-capped Mt Buller, hundreds of handmade lanterns wind through Mansfield’s streets in a beloved winter solstice parade. The event features three days of firelight ceremonies, local food and wine, open fires, live music and a gentle Sunday sunrise yoga and solstice brunch.

MANSFIELD 19–21 JUN

SORRENTO SOLSTICE FESTIVAL

This spectacular one-night celebration on the Mornington Peninsula foreshore features live music, DJ sets, fire performers and a large-scale burning installation lighting up the winter sky. Round it out the next morning with the Solstice Sunrise Swim in the waters of Port Phillip Bay.

SORRENTO 20–21 JUN

TOURS

DRY CLEANING –SECRET LOVE TOUR

South London post-punk favourites make their first Australian return since 2022, bringing their critically acclaimed third album Secret Love to a rare regional headline show. Florence Shaw’s deadpan spoken-word delivery over Tom Dowse’s stoner-art-rock guitar is unlike anything else onstage right now.

BALLARAT CIVIC HALL 7 JUN

VIKA & LINDA – WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? TOUR

Australia’s beloved soul sisters are on their biggest national tour yet, with regional Victoria dates. Their ninth studio album Where Do You Come From?, their first record of predominantly original material in 30 years, is out 5 June.

VARIOUS VENUES 29 MAY–10 OCT

JEFF CARTER PRESENTS THE EAGLES GREATEST HITS

This dedicated tribute to one of the best-selling bands of all time brings the sweeping harmonies and sun-drenched rock of the Eagles’ greatest songs to Shepparton’s performing arts centre. Hear classic hits played in full; perfect for fans of the real thing.

RIVERLINKS EASTBANK, SHEPPARTON 19 JUN

PURITY RING

It’s been a full decade since Purity Ring last set foot on Australian soil, and Corin and MJ have clearly been thinking about the return.

Æ Ahead of their east coast headline tour this June — their first local dates in 10 years — the duo shared the five things they’re most looking forward to revisiting down under. Spoiler: the food ranks highly.

First up, coffee. “We dream of coffee and brunch in Australia, especially Slowpoke,” the duo say, name-checking the beloved Brunswick East cafe. If you’ve ever tried to explain Melbourne’s brunch culture to a Canadian, you’ll understand why a decade away might sting.

Then there’s the pastry pilgrimage. Lune Croissanterie, the Fitzroy institution that routinely draws queues around the block, made the list with a glowing endorsement: “Fitzroy or France, one of the best we’ve had, ever.” High praise from a band who’ve toured the world several times over.

“We always seem to find somebody old or new who we never realised how much we love.”

The tour marks a triumphant return for one of electronic pop’s most distinctive acts. Purity Ring’s self-titled fourth album is the most expansive the duo has ever sounded, with their visual identity deeply embedded in the record’s DNA. Inspired by RPGs like Nier Automata and Final Fantasy X, the album tells the story of two characters on a journey to build a kinder world amid the ruins of a broken one. It’s the kind of ambitious, self-directed creative swing that only comes from a band fully in control of their vision.

It’s not all eating, though. The National Gallery of Victoria also earned a spot, and the duo’s reasoning is genuinely lovely. “Just to walk around but we always seem to find somebody old or new who we never realised how much we love,” they say. There’s something fitting about a band known for building lush, immersive sonic worlds being drawn to gallery spaces between shows.

Number four on the list is a longer-term dream. “Pink Lake — always wanted to see this, probably still won’t on this round so we will have to come back for longer,” they admit. Consider that an open invitation for Australian promoters to book a more expansive routing next time.

And rounding out the five? The show itself. “The Purity Ring show at Northcote Theatre — we cannot wait to come back, see you there!” It’s hard to argue with that energy.

Since releasing their debut Shrines on 4AD — which earned Pitchfork’s Best New Music honours and a Polaris Prize shortlist — the pair have carved out a singular lane. Fineshrine is certified gold in the US, Grandloves was sampled by Playboi Carti on Die Lit, and their latest era of self-released music feels like the destination they’ve been building toward all along.

PURITY RING

WHERE: NORTHCOTE THEATRE

WHEN: 11 JUN

THE GNOMES

WORDS BY DOM LEPORE

Frankston’s fab four are like time travellers bringing ‘60s and ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll back into the spotlight.

Æ When these four mates’ music gets going, you’re transported back to the beat music era – The Beatles, The Kinks and our own The Easybeats. The Gnomes breathe new life into the tight garage-rock sound with poppy hooks and an energetic presence, filling venues all over Melbourne.

Another thrilling offspring from Frankston’s Singing Bird Studio scene, The Gnomes have existed in some form since late 2022, but until the last year or so, they weren’t always a four-piece, nor rock ‘n’ roll revivalists.

The Gnomes used to be one: Gnome, a solo bedroom project for lead songwriter Jay Millar to record and release songs. His earliest output resembled Mac DeMarco’s lo-fi rock and Duster’s slowcore more than The Gnomes’ classic rock, but “with or without a band,” Jay says, “the sound would’ve naturally pushed in that direction.” “I was making music like what I was listening to,” he adds.

The other three came into the picture through music; nobody went to school together. “We all met around the same time at like 15 or so, but in different universes,” bassist Olly Katsianis says. “Singing Bird Studio is the real hub where we met each other.”

Jay and Olly were members of Hey Spiro!. Jay met guitarist Ned Capp through mutual friends. Drummer Ethan Robins, who plays in Stimpies, while hammered on a night out, told Jay, “If you need anything, I’ll drum for you.” A couple of days later, Jay asked Ethan to fill in for some gigs, and they never looked back.

“It was like our first rehearsal [with Ethan], and it just sounded different,” Olly recalls. “It sounded bigger.” “We had two drummers before,” Ned mentions. With their lineup finalised, they started taking Gnome more seriously, but Jay still viewed it as a solo endeavour.

The Gnomes’ self-titled debut album was released last November. Jay initially wrote and recorded it in its entirety, but that cut isn’t what we got. “It didn’t sound right,” Jay says. “I was chatting with Olly, and he said, ‘Why don’t we just re-record it with the whole band, so it sounds like how we sound live?’” And so, that’s how Gnome got pluralised for good. Their bright, swinging riffs with catchy harmonies make for a truly lively performance that’s difficult not to move to. That energy feels natural, but it’s “not out of nowhere,” as Jay explains: “It stems back to the Frankston scene we grew up in. There were so many punk, metal and hardcore bands – even the indie bands always had heaps of energy.” Ethan notes it’s just “how [they] grew up watching people perform.”

They also recognise it’s easier for audiences to enjoy gigs if the band is visibly having fun. “If a band is standing still and looking bored to be there, you’re probably just going to go back to the beer garden and ignore them,” Jay says.

The camaraderie with the bands they play with leads to some friendly competition –Jay describes it as “playing against your mates in school footy.” For those outside of the Frankston scene, they’re “playing with really cool people [they] love and [they’ve] become mates with,” as Olly says. They’re even meeting bands they idolised growing up, who inspired them in the first place: “A lot of them are our fucking mates now, which is this whole other thing,” Ethan says. “You get to realise everyone’s just people.”

“A lot of them are our fucking mates now, which is this whole other thing. You get to realise everyone’s just people.”

The Gnomes are also gigging all the time, alongside big names like Hockey Dad (Ethan managed to play drums for them), Eddy Current Suppression Ring and soon for each of Spiderbait’s anniversary shows this July. It gets intense, but they truthfully don’t know anything else. “What’s the point of not playing all the time?” Ned asks. “We’re putting everything into it, so we may as well.” They’re young and have the energy, so this is the best time to get cracking.

By the time this chat hits the street press, The Gnomes will have finished their first European tour. The band seem perpetually on the up, and their music is taking them to unexpected places, now including overseas. “I think we’re all under the impression of we don’t believe it until it happens,” Jay admits. “It’s very weird, but we’re happy to go with it.”

Their rise is so deserved. The Gnomes embody the rock ‘n’ roll spirit as hard workers, and their triumphant homecoming will certainly set their audience ablaze.

Credit all images: Danysha Harriott

RUM JUNGLE

There are countless examples of a hyped debut album giving way to a rushed and disappointing follow-up release. Guns N’ Roses’ Lies and Stone Roses’ Second Coming are two key examples.

Æ Then there are the artists who struggled so severely with the weight of anticipation that they went dark for several years. The Blue Nile took five years to follow A Walk Across the Rooftops with Hats. The Avalanches allowed 16 years to pass between their seminal debut, Since I Left You, and its follow-up, Wildflower.

But Newcastle four-piece Rum Jungle are calmly evading either category. The band’s second album, Marginalia, arrives just 16 months after their first, Recency Bias, which debuted at #9 on the ARIA Top 50 Albums Chart – the only Australian album in that week’s top 10.

It’s a rapid turnaround, especially considering Rum Jungle have been touring non-stop since Recency Bias came out. But for vocalist and guitarist Benny McIntyre, the tidy delivery time is simply a result of the band continuing to do what they love best.

“We weren’t looking too far ahead,” he says, chatting to Beat from his Newcastle home studio. “We were just making sure that we were getting the track laid down in front of us as best we could, but not understanding that it was going to become Marginalia. I was like, ‘Gotta keep writing,’ just because it’s my favourite thing in the world to do.”

Rum Jungle’s music has always been an aggregate of the four members’ varied tastes, which range from contemporary indie rock and post-punk to folk, jazz and star vocalists like Norah Jones.

A couple of years ago, around the time of the Did the Morning Let You Down single, McIntyre told me that Rum Jungle’s sound is essentially the “centre point between four big musical egos that we end up meeting at with every song.”

For Marginalia, the creative brain trust grew to include a couple of outside songwriters: Charlie Hole (aka Thomas Porter) and Pacific Avenue’s Harry O’Brien. “Six or seven of the tracks we wrote with them,” McIntyre says. “That was the first time that any of us had branched off to write with other people.”

They recorded Marginalia with producer Julian Sudek (Royel Otis, Genesis Owusu), who also has a few co-writing credits. The band camped out in Sudek’s Sydney recording studio for the duration of the tracking process.

“We just brought in a bunch of mattresses and then walked 10 meters to the studio every day,” McIntyre says. “They didn’t have a shower so we signed up to the gym that was heaps close by and we just went and showered in the gym with our heads down, hoping nobody realised what we were doing.”

The Marginalia album tour features Rum Jungle’s biggest Australian headline shows to date, including a gig at Northcote Theatre on Saturday, 27 June. The band have had an exceptionally busy start to 2026, completing a tour of the UK and Europe in February before heading to Japan in April.

“What I keep saying to the boys is that there’s just something about 2026, this year, for us,” McIntyre says. “It’s a bit of a whirlwind, but we’re super stoked and super grateful that we’re able to go touring. Like, holy shit, we just went to Japan for the first time – first time even going there in general – and we got to play this music that we’ve written in random little rooms in Newcastle and then there we were in the middle of Shibuya, Japan.”

“We just brought in a bunch of mattresses and then walked 10 meters to the studio every day.”

Rum Jungle have a US headline tour locked in for September and October, plus a slot on the Austin City Limits music festival alongside headliners Charli XCX, The xx and Lorde. They’re looking forward to incorporating a significant chunk of Marginalia into the tour setlist.

“I still remember when we were first playing all the tiny little venues in Newcastle and the fucking local Mayfield skate park and struggling to get a 30-minute set,” McIntyre says. “Now we’re looking down the barrel of an hour-20, hour-30 set or something ridiculous like that and still thinking that we could squeeze more songs in. So it’s definitely feeling pretty good and we’re really excited for the tour.”

RUM JUNGLE

WHERE: NORTHCOTE THEATRE

WHEN: 27 JUN

MATT CORBY

WORDS BY FRANKIE ANDERSON-BYRNE

There’s a particular kind of artistic courage in refusing to make things easy for yourself.

Æ Matt Corby has built a career on exactly that: the uncomfortable, the counterintuitive, and the choice to sit inside a difficult feeling and figure out what it actually sounds like.

His forthcoming fifth album Tragic Magic, out 17 April, is perhaps his most assured expression of that instinct yet, musing on fatherhood, grief, isolation and joy, all wrapped in liquid basslines, soaring falsetto and the kind of sophisticated soul he does so well.

Beat caught up with Corby ahead of the album’s release and his national tour to talk about holding heaviness lightly, the long road to trusting yourself, and why the best things in the studio often happen without anyone saying a word.

The first thing that strikes you, or at least it did me, about Tragic Magic is the contradiction at its heart. Heavy themes –death, isolation, the bruising cost of love – are delivered in a sound that is frequently funky, light and fun.

“I think it’s always good to juxtapose,”

Corby tells me. “If something is really heavy, it can become real cheesy real quick if you’re not coupling it with something a little counterintuitive.” Where the album does pull back, most strikingly on the haunting, cinematically expansive Know It All, it reveals the other Corby: the one who grew up singing soul songs before

he ever wrote one, who cares deeply about real instruments played by real people, and who has spent the better part of a decade making himself indispensable in the recording process.

From Rainbow Valley onwards, he tells me, he made a conscious call to play as much as the music would allow. On Tragic Magic, he co-produces every track and performs the majority of instruments himself.

“I’m getting more hands-on in production naturally because I’m doing that a lot more as a job for others,” he explains, “and I feel like I have more to offer on that front as time goes on.” But he’s not precious about where he’s at.

“I feel I’m still in my apprenticeship of figuring out how to record music and put it together and engineer it properly. I’m close to finishing that apprenticeship. I’ve learnt heaps from the people I work closely with, and I’ve got a really great circle of musical friends, most of whom are other producers, and they’re all really happy to share their tricks.”

That circle is small and deeply trusted. Longtime collaborators Nat Dunn, Chris Collins (Royel Otis, Middle Kids) and Dann Hume (Genesis Owusu, Tones and I) return across the record, and Corby is unambiguous about what those relationships give him that no amount of fresh energy can replicate.

“Sometimes you think you’re killing it and then you listen back and go, ‘Oh! That’s a pile of shit.’ Great, I thought I was a genius yesterday.”

“There’s something so good about people knowing where you’ve come from, sonically. What I like about them and what I think they like about me is we’re not trying to ever do the same thing. Well, we’re trying; sometimes you fall into patterns in writing and playing.

“We’ve developed a level of telekinesis shit in the studio. There’s not a lot of talk, we’re just moving as one which is nice.

“Music isn’t just the lyrical message or melody. It’s about how both of those things work together and how all three can create an emotion. I do think one thing I’ve always been good at is creating emotion from my voice. So if I just find the other two things to work with it, every now and then we pull it off.”

He grins.

“Songwriting can be weird like that. Sometimes you think you’re killing it and then you listen back and go, ‘Oh! That’s a pile of shit. Great, I thought I was a genius yesterday.’”

Four albums in, Corby is still playing theatres, still genuinely uncertain whether the next song will land, and clearly, genuinely fine with that.

“I’m amazed I’m still playing and people are still coming to shows,” he says. “Even to get four albums deep and still be able to pay the mortgage, I’m really lucky. But maybe some of that is due to me being weird with some of my choices, keeping myself guessing, keeping others guessing.”

He shrugs. “I kind of like it like that. And the older I get, the more I’m like: if it feels good, it’s a thing.”

MATT CORBY

WHERE: FORUM

WHEN: 9 & 10 JUN

Credit: Oliver Cafferky

VIKA & LINDA

WORDS BY LUKE CARLINO

The soon-to-be ARIA Hall of Fame inductees have a newfound confidence in their songwriting.

Æ Vika & Linda have the kind of music career that most Australian artists would sell a limb for. They have been releasing music, touring, performing and collaborating with other amazing artists for over 35 years, have written an autobiography, and are about to be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame for their service.

When you look at that track record, it may make Vika’s reaction to the nomination seem strange.

“There are probably a lot more people who deserve to be on there before us,” she says.

Linda adds, “Just to be recognised for our contribution is really lovely. I didn’t realise that there were only 14 women inducted into the Hall of Fame. So for this year to have lots more women involved is really another bonus.”

Their disbelief at being included is sweetly humble, yet curious given their beyond-impressive track record, which continues with their upcoming studio album, Where Do You Come From?

“Linda’s always said, we always look forward, never back,” explains Vika, “And it’s always, ‘What are we going to make next?’ Our responsibility is to keep singing, and to sing great songs, and never stop until we die.”

Nine albums, however, is a lot. Inspiration can wane, no matter what your situation may be. For Vika & Linda, an invitation to the Whitsundays Songwriter Festival, a yearly event that invites a select group of songwriters to collaborate and perform on Ngaro and Gia land in North Queensland, sparked confidence and inspiration.

“The great thing about the Whitsong Fest was that it was just the right bunch of people who had come together. The freedom of that was really great for Vika in particular, because we aren’t normally great with people we don’t know. Sitting down and trying to lay your deepest feelings with a total stranger was weird. But for some reason, this one worked. We wrote eight songs, and four of them are on this record,” explains Linda.

The duo were in impressive company at the festival, working with songwriters like Mark Sholtez, Francesca de Valence, and the oneand-only Toni Childs.

“Our motivation is not to sing bullshit.”

“She was like Renee Geyer on steroids,” mentions Vika, “She was very intimidating. She comes in and goes, ‘I want to know who you are, who you really are.’ We’d only sat down for 10 minutes and she goes ‘Sing, because I want to hear who you are.’ We sang a gospel song, and she goes, ‘No, that’s not who you are.’ She really made us get back in touch with our roots.”

This experience and songwriting session helped Vika & Linda create what they explain as their most personal work to date.

“Our motivation is not to sing bullshit,” explains Vika. “We’re not really afraid anymore to say what we want to say and sing songs we want to sing.”

Linda adds, “This album is about life. It’s about birth, death and everything in between. In the past, we were always afraid to tell our own stories; this time, the motivation was that we got to do it ourselves.”

The duo’s track record of songwriting collaborations reads like a greatest hits of Australia’s finest. Starting in The Black Sorrows, the sisters have written songs with names like Paul

Kelly and Kasey Chambers, so it’s understandable why there may be some trepidation about songwriting on their own.

The record explores themes like identity, ancestry, motherhood, ageing, grief and joy, and is a snapshot of the current situation for specific members of our community, according to Linda.

“If you’re interested in identity, and where you are in Australia, and what Australia looks like right now for 55-year-old women, this is a really good record for you. 55-year-old women who aren’t white, I should add.”

VIKA & LINDA

WHERE: MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE

WHEN: 13 JUN

BRIAN JACKSON

WORDS BY FRANKIE ANDERSON-BYRNE

When I get Brian Jackson over Zoom, he’s reflective, unhurried, speaking with the quiet authority of someone who has spent half a century watching his music find its way into the hearts of generations.

Æ Jackson is known as the musical architect and backbone behind Gil Scott-Heron, the poet and musician widely credited as a godfather of hip hop. Together, Jackson and Scott-Heron made some of the most quietly revolutionary music of the 20th century.

They met at Lincoln University in 1969, two teenagers who recognised something in each other immediately, and what followed was nine years and nine albums that refused to look away.

Now, for the first time, Jackson and Yasiin Bey, the Brooklyn rapper, actor and activist best known by his stage name Mos Def, whose own catalogue sits among the most celebrated in hip hop, are sharing a stage, bringing a world premiere to Melbourne’s RISING festival that draws a direct line through 50-odd years of music that still feels urgently, disturbingly current.

I ask Jackson to take me back to that first meeting with Scott-Heron.

“I think we both felt like outsiders in a way,” Jackson tells me. “It came from how we looked at things. We looked at them in a similar way, so [we] naturally banded together.”

The easy shorthand is that Scott-Heron was the poet and Jackson the musician, but partnerships like theirs are rarely that clean cut.

“I would say what you hear on record is 80 per cent me, 20 per cent lyrically me. Gil was more or less 80 per cent lyrics and 20 per cent music. When you put it together, it’s 200 per cent. It worked.”

The process behind that 200 per cent was deceptively simple, almost spiritual in the way Jackson describes it.

“We would have very short conversations. The music always came first; being on a higher plane as it’s not words and more in the ether, it lends itself to more ideas. We would call those ideas and put them into words.

That’s why it worked the way it did. The lyrics had to say what the music said.” What the music said was something so rooted in truth that it has never needed updating. Songs like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised continue to circulate not as nostalgia but as current affairs, and I find myself wondering aloud to Jackson whether honesty is what’s kept these songs breathing for 50-odd years.

“Honesty, and the fact it hasn’t changed that much,” he says. “The situation hasn’t changed. A lot of young people will approach and ask me how we knew the things happening now would

Credit: Pedro

Jafuno

“Human feeling and the need for unity and peaceful dialogue, we were big on that. We were big on protest and speaking out.”

happen 50 years before. The sad truth is we were just commenting on what was happening at the time, and the fact it’s still happening is not only alarming but quite sad.”

With conscious music in the ’70s coming out of a very specific cultural moment – the tail-end of the civil right movement, the rise of black power, and the Vietnam War – I ask whether playing these songs in 2026 feels like holding up a document of the past, or a mirror to the present. He doesn’t hesitate.

“A mirror, disturbingly so. I think part of its lasting quality is the fact we are also not just talking about politics per se, but about human emotion and connection – human feeling and the need for unity and peaceful dialogue, we were big on that. We were big on protest and speaking out. Those basic qualities haven’t changed, and they’re human needs.”

Jackson traces that sense of purpose back well beyond the 1970s to a tradition he and Scott-Heron understood themselves to be carrying forward.

“I consider myself, and I think Gil would’ve agreed, we were descendants of a tradition. It started with West African Creole, where the artistic person in the community was responsible for addressing the issues of the community as well as preserving the culture and history of that community. This is what we tried to do.”

I ask how he navigated moving between his jazz roots and the funk, soul and spoken word he made with Scott-Heron, two musical identities that might have pulled a lesser artist in opposite directions.

“In terms of my music, I always had eclectic tastes. I could listen to Cream or the Beatles or Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Digable Planets, Tribe Called Quest, Black Star; every time I heard them, whether or not consciously assimilated, it came out through what I do. It just filtered through me.”

It’s a reminder that the music was never narrow, never dogmatic, always porous and alive to the world around it.

It’s something he recognises instinctively in Yasiin Bey, with whom he has spent years sharing one degree of separation without ever actually meeting.

“We had a common affinity to begin with. I’ve always understood that about him.

“He worked with Gil [on] a show in New York that I was unable to attend, but it looked like a beautiful type of energy, and I expect the same again.”

Towards the end of our conversation, I ask what he hopes people carry out of the room with them after a show like this. He answers simply.

“That people come away with a feeling of unity, of hope, and that they’re not alone. Everybody in that room should feel as though there’s somebody standing next to them who also gets it.” The revolution will not be televised. But on 28 May, it will be at the Forum.

GIL SCOTT-HERON BY BRIAN JACKSON & YASIIN BEY

WHERE: FORUM

WHEN: 28 MAY

Credit: Louise Comet

“In this case, the space becomes a collaborator, actively shaping the sound rather than just containing it.”

NIKITA ZABELIN’S GROUND

WORDS BY LUCAS RADBOURNE

Most

live electronic

music is designed to overpower the room it’s played in.

Æ Nikita Zabelin’s Ground does the opposite. The Moscow-based sound artist’s audiovisual performance works with architecture, not against it — using lasers and modular synthesis to transform a single space into something between a listening chamber and a sensory installation. On 5 June, it takes over the Norla Dome at the Mission to Seafarers in Docklands, and the pairing might be the most considered venue match Melbourne has seen in a while.

The Norla Dome is a 17-metre concrete dome with exposed brick walls, originally built as a gymnasium for visiting seafarers at Melbourne’s port. It has no windows. It seats around 120 people. And its acoustics are extreme — the kind of room where a whispered conversation from one side can be heard clearly on the other. It’s a space that tends to impose itself on whatever happens inside it, which is exactly why it works for a project like Ground.

Zabelin, the founder of Moscow label and artist collective Resonance Moscow, built Ground around the idea of longform tonal immersion. Rather than a DJ set or a conventional live electronic performance, the show unfolds as a single sustained environment — a laser positioned at the highest point of the space casts a cone of light down to a circular base, while Zabelin manipulates a modular synthesiser to generate sounds in real time. Sand and projections complete the picture. The audience sits inside the work rather than watching it from the outside.

The performance has been staged across Europe in some deliberately unusual settings — at LUZA festival in Portugal, Berlin’s LOST festival, and 43 metres underground in an actual bunker. Zabelin has also collaborated with Greenpeace, recording a piece in the Ulyanovsk region in support of environmentally friendly energy transition. Ground’s Melbourne edition, presented by Soundcheck and Platform Presents, follows a smaller first Australian showing last October that was hampered by last-minute visa approvals.

That initial visit, though, proved something crucial about the Norla Dome. Ivan Kyrov of Soundcheck, who first brought Zabelin to Australia independently before partnering with Platform Presents for this return, makes a strong case for the pairing.

“I’d argue the Norla Dome is the definitive space for a work like Ground,” Kyrov says. “While it has been used for dance music, the architecture creates heavy natural reverb and echo, which makes tightly rhythmic music difficult to translate clearly. Ground, built around ambient, noise and experimental sound, fits naturally within that environment.”

That fit became literal during a rehearsal at the Dome last October. “We tested the space together and the reverb was so strong he removed the reverb module from his setup entirely,” Kyrov says. “In this case, the space becomes a collaborator, actively shaping the sound rather than just containing it.”

An artist removing part of their own equipment because the building already does the job says more about Ground’s relationship to space than any press release could. A room designed for century-old gymnastics routines, it turns out, produces exactly the kind of natural resonance that a modular synthesiser performance can lean into rather than fight.

Ground isn’t a club night and it isn’t a gallery opening. It occupies a space between the two that Melbourne events rarely commit to fully — one where the sound, the light, the architecture and the materials on the floor are all treated as part of the same composition. Whether that registers as an art experience or a music experience probably depends on where you’re standing when the laser hits the sand.

NIKITA ZABELIN’S GROUND

WHERE: NORLA DOME, MISSION TO SEAFARERS

WHEN: 5 JUN

Credit: Jasmine Hirst

LYDIA LUNCH

WORDS BY MJ KIM

Lydia Lunch has always done women’s work in a man’s world. It’s a world of urban decay to be confronted.

Æ Few artists are better suited to inhabit the music of Suicide than Lunch, who will do so on 17 June at The Tote alongside Andrew Coates of Melbourne band Black Cab. She is no passive admirer either, having shaped No Wave alongside vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev. At age 16, Lunch found a home in Suicide and the Big Apple.

“Suicide [was] the first concert I saw after running away the second time to New York,” she recalls. “I’m like, ‘I’m in. These are my peeps.’ And I was younger than Martin Rev’s son. They kind of adopted me at that point.”

The Suicide material shares themes with Lunch’s own work and, as such, becomes transformed through her female perspective. Her covers become a means of inserting herself into the narrative and continuing it, rather than mere imitations. Frankie Teardrop, in particular, takes on a different power in her hands.

“I think my version is even more intense than the original,” Lunch declares. “After all, there are very intense females as well, and we have intense relations, we have intense feelings, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be expressed, even if they were originally written by a man … There is so much room for me to proselytise my own words.”

Lunch’s reputation precedes her. She has long been labelled a diva, aggressive, obnoxious; a self-avowed “verbal boxer”. Yet why shouldn’t she be expressive?

“I’m not professing a fucking dogma philosophy,” she says. “I’m proposing a variety of possibilities. I’m not a solutionist. I am here to propose what the problem is … I am rap without the beat. The beat is what I’m going to give you with my tongue.”

Lydia Lunch encapsulates the resonance of the spoken, sung and screamed word – art’s ability to articulate feelings we ourselves do not know how to. The sentiments of Suicide and her own work remain as relevant as they are united. To witness their raw power first-hand is a gift Melbourne is lucky enough to receive.

HUGERNAUT

“It’s all about the music” for regional family band Hugernaut, who are pumped to finally launch their Circulator album in the Big Smoke.

Æ Crisp drumming, menacing bass, brooding vocals, raucous guitar accents – Anti Social Social, which opens this Victorian trio’s latest album, Circulator, is impossible to ignore.

We can see why Hugo Horvat’s guitar teacher – Terry Murray, a retired neighbour who played guitar on The Wiggles’ first two albums and has performed with musical legends such as Tom Jones and Jimmy Barnes – declared of his pupil, “I believe he could be the next David Bowie!”

Hugernaut play with effortless synergy, so it’s no surprise all three band members are blood-related. Horvat’s older brother Gerard smashes the kit, and their dad, Gabriel, plays bass.

Hugo and Gerard are proud to have their dad on board and believe the multigenerational lineup gives them an edge.

“Almost everybody we meet believes I am just a friend of theirs or a bit of an older sibling,” says Gabriel. “The only difference is I literally saw both of them come into this world and we’ve all known each other all our lives.”

It all started back in 2020, with Hugo and Gerard jamming at their rural Victorian country farmhouse. Over the next few years, the brothers built Asbestos Studio, near Castlemaine, and started writing songs.

While searching for their own distinctive sound, they experimented with everything from “blue-eyed soul to jazzy country and post-punk rock”.

Then halfway through 2025, they found it: “on the slightly less distorted end of indie alternative rock, often with more of a pop-rock feel.” Their new album, Circulator, features 10 fresh tracks designed to be listened to from start to finish, composed to reflect the brothers’ experiences: “relationship breakdowns, the vulnerability of everyday existence and the day-to-day grind of social media.”

Having previously only performed in front of regional audiences, Hugernaut now feel ready to launch in the Big Smoke. So what can Melbourne expect?

“There are no flashy stunts, no flashin’ a lot of skin. It’s all about the music,” Gerard enlightens.

LYDIA LUNCH

WHERE: THE TOTE

WHEN: 17 JUN

HUGERNAUT

WHERE: NIGHTHAWKS

WHEN: 7 JUN

WORDS BY BRYGET CHRISFIELD

THE GEM

LIVE MUSIC: The Gem runs live music and DJ sets throughout the week, with the honky-tonk spirit baked into the programming as much as the decor. There’s no stage — acts set up on the floor near the front door, which means the line between performer and punter barely exists.

FAMOUS FOR: the Americana atmosphere. Walk in and you’re somewhere between a Texan dive bar, a Mexican cantina and an Elvis shrine. The wood-panelled interior is crammed with cowboy boots, vintage LPs, luchador masks, sugar skulls, religious statuettes and ranch-style furniture.

INFAMOUS FOR: being the most fun you can have on a quiet stretch of Wellington Street. Tucked away from the Smith Street and Johnston Street buzz, The Gem doesn’t get the passing foot traffic of its inner-north neighbours — you come here because you know about it, not because you stumbled past.

Æ Most people know Collingwood for Smith Street’s relentless parade of bars and restaurants, but one block east on Wellington Street, The Gem has been quietly running its own show since the mid-2000s. It’s a pub that feels like it was transplanted from somewhere in the Deep South and dropped onto a Victorian-era corner.

The lack of a stage is the best thing about it. Bands play on the same floor as everyone else, hemmed in by punters holding schooners, and when the room fills up on a weekend it gets loud, sweaty and exactly as chaotic as a good pub gig should be. During the week it’s a mellower proposition — drop in for a midweek beer and you’ll find a handful of regulars, something decent on the stereo and bar staff who actually want to chat.

It’s also wheelchair accessible with ground-level entry off the street, which puts it ahead of plenty of Melbourne’s older pubs. Whether you’re there for the music, the margaritas or the sheer visual overload of the interior, The Gem earns its name without having to try too hard.

NORLA DOME

LIVE MUSIC: Norla Dome doesn’t run a regular gig schedule — instead, it opens its doors to independent promoters, creative collectives and artists who transform the space into something different each time. Electroacoustic performances, experimental electronic nights, choir concerts, immersive sound installations and art raves have all found a home under the 17-metre concrete dome.

FAMOUS FOR: the dome itself. Originally built as a gymnasium for visiting seafarers, the towering 17-metre concrete structure creates acoustics that most venues can only dream of. Exposed brick walls surround the circular room, and natural light floods in during the day, giving afternoon events a warmth that feels nothing like a typical gig space.

INFAMOUS FOR: being hidden in plain sight. Sitting inside the heritage-listed Mission to Seafarers building on Flinders Street in Docklands — a stone’s throw from Southern Cross Station — the Norla Dome is technically one of the most accessible venues in Melbourne, yet plenty of people have never heard of it.

Æ Most people walk past 717 Flinders Street without a second glance. Behind the heritage facade, the Mission to Seafarers has been caring for crews arriving at the Port of Melbourne for over a century — and in recent years, the Norla Dome has quietly become one of the city’s most atmospheric performance spaces. It’s the kind of room that changes the music. The dome’s natural reverb suits ambient and electroacoustic work as much as it does choral harmonies, and the exposed brick and raw concrete give everything a weight that carpeted black-box venues can’t match. Promoters bring their own vision, sound and lighting, which means no two events here look or feel the same.

A short walk from Southern Cross Station and inside the free tram zone, it’s far easier to get to than its Docklands address might suggest. If you haven’t been, it’s worth keeping an eye on the Mission to Seafarers events page — shows here tend to sell out quietly and without much fanfare.

WHERE: 289 WELLINGTON ST, COLLINGWOOD

OPEN: TUE–WED FROM 4PM, THU–SUN FROM 12PM (GIG TIMES VARY)

WHERE: 717 FLINDERS ST, DOCKLANDS (INSIDE THE MISSION TO SEAFARERS)

OPEN: THU FROM 4PM / FRI–SUN FROM 12PM (EVENT TIMES VARY)

MISFITS

LIVE MUSIC: consists of at least two DJ nights a week, built around a curatorial ethos that puts artists of colour and open-format freedom front and centre. Nights here resist easy categorisation — expect sets that shift genre mid-track and a crowd that came specifically because of that. No background music, no filler.

FAMOUS FOR: community, in the most genuine sense of the word. Events like the Migrant Chess Club bring together gameplay, music and creativity under one roof. Owner Jerry Poon built this as a platform for emerging talent and a space where the local community actually feels at home — and it shows.

INFAMOUS FOR: the backyard. Step outside and you’re in something that looks like a creative commune that survived the end of the world — rough brick, bursts of colour, and somehow the music follows you out there just as loud. People stay for hours. UNO has been spotted.

Æ This west side venue is doing it differently. Misfits arrives in Footscray with the energy of a house party thrown by people who actually know what they’re doing — raw industrial bones, walls covered in art from across the diaspora, and a soundsystem that means business. It’s the kind of room that feels lived-in from day one. Footscray has long punched above its weight for venues with genuine soul, and Misfits fits right in. The kind of discovery that feels like yours, even when the room is packed.

WHITEHART BAR

LIVE MUSIC: June at Whitehart delivers a full month of music across every night of the week. Northside Records own Tuesdays, No Era holds down Wednesdays, and DJ JNETT & Jimmy James bring their Inner Sanctuary residency every Thursday. Fridays and Saturdays rotate through an eclectic lineup; from Dirty Disco and Nightfall to Glizzy and Keep Diggin, while Sundays wrap up beautifully each week with NHTv Hartbeats featuring Tanya George, Gabe Coleman, Shantael Raphael and Oscar Ladell alongside Amin Payne. See you in July.

FAMOUS FOR: its urban oasis filled with plants up to 100 years old, serving boutique wines, house-made cocktails, and craft beers. It’s the kind of place where you can ask what’s good and get a real answer rather than a shrug. With a drinks list that rewards curiosity, and where graffiti meets projection art, there’s always something worth looking at while you figure out what to drink next.

INFAMOUS FOR: the rooftop. Getting a spot up top on a clear afternoon with a cocktail in hand is one of those quietly great Melbourne experiences that doesn’t get talked about enough. And when the weather turns, the retractable roof means you’re not going anywhere — the rooftop holds its own in any season. The covered courtyard downstairs keeps things going too.

Æ Born out of a converted carpark and hidden down a Melbourne laneway lies Whitehart Bar — with the industrial swagger to make purpose-built venues look boring. It’s got container bar bones, graffiti walls, kaleidoscopic projections, and two levels of outdoor space keeping the atmosphere going regardless of what the sky is doing — which in Melbourne, matters. Four seasons. One laneway.

But it’s easy to walk past. Tucked down the end of Whitehart Lane, it’s the kind of discovery that feels like a rare find, even if half the city already knows about it.

DJs run Thursday through Sunday, with local and international talent dropping in regularly. Spontaneous food pop-ups keep things unpredictable in the best way, so watch the socials to know when one’s on.

WHERE: 22 WHITEHART LN, MELBOURNE

WHERE: 30 CHAMBERS STREET, FOOTSCRAY

OPEN: THU–SUN FROM 5PM

OPEN: OPEN EVERY DAY FROM NOON–LATE (EXCEPT XMAS DAY, NYD, NYE)

REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE

Æ Genesis Owusu has already earned a spot on Barack Obama’s playlist, won the Australian Music Prize for his debut album (Smiling With No Teeth) and needs a trophy cabinet just to house his ARIA Awards alone (seven so far).

In whichever medium he creates, Owusu is a truthseeker. He constantly revamps his artistry while somehow always managing to remain within the confines of his own carefully constructed audiovisual universe. And this Ghanaian-Australian artist continues to wow and gobsmack throughout album number three.

In the record’s accompanying presser, Owusu is quoted as saying, “I feel like I’m a student of Nina Simone and she said, ‘The purpose of an artist is to reflect the times they live in’.”

His wordsmithery dazzles (eg. “Toupée’d totalitarians”) over complex, throbbing beats. Sometimes DJ Shadow springs to mind. There’s also some curveballs, such as Blessed Are The Meek, which wouldn’t sound outta place on OutKast’s The Love Below (Andre 3000’s half of the legendary duo’s 2003 double album), and BIG DOG, featuring synth stabs that evoke Underworld‘s Two Months Off.

Some of Owusu’s third album was Australian made, other parts were recorded in a converted church located in a small town in South Wales. Visually, Owusu leaned into his Ghanaian heritage, having spent some time in his homeland of late.

Buckle up! REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE sees Owusu taking aim at Trump, Elon Musk, incels and “Kanye fans” – all within track one. During the opening PIRATE RADIO’s first verse, Owusu rhymes “stadium” with “cranium”. His witty turn of phrase never fails to make us grin.

A self-described “post-apocalyptic love song”, the swaying, down-tempo HELLSTAR (feat. American rapper Dckwrth) brings the afterhours funk while encouraging us to “get a squeezin’” while we can.

“Giving my reply with a bat/ Find an oligarch, get him taxed” – STAMPEDE (“...if ya with me”) is a pogo anthem to rival The Presets’ My People.

The unflinching title track opens with a striking, monotone rap monologue before completely unleashing: “I ain’t above celebratin’ the death of an abuser/ I’ll mark his body black and blue till I make a Yakuza… Say Africans ain’t black/ Trans people are the sinners/ Palestine hates gays… How dare they pillage Gaza and still have the nerve to sleep at night/ I hope your final flight comes soon.”

Elsewhere, FALLING BOTH WAYS is wonky and melodically rich, LIFE KEEPS GOING features a fitting relentless-treadmill tempo, the key change in MOST NORMAL AMERICAN VOTER (what a title!) made our eyes widen, Britpop influences infuse the MAGA-referencing DEATH CULT ZOMBIE and RUNNIN OUTTA TIME explores joy as an act of resistance.

Owusu’s final prediction during the closing ONE4ALL is “...we gonna be alright”. Our key takeaways? The world is fucked right now. When everything feels heavy, communal dancing offers both physical and psychological relief. Owusu is one helluva talented mofo.

LABEL: OURNESS

RELEASE: OUT NOW

FAN GIRL 8HRS

Æ You’ll be hooked from opener Easy Now’s intro: a field recording that sounds like bustling traffic, with Santa’s bell ringing in the distance. Enter descending keys, propulsive drums and an optimistic bassline, as the mysterious underscore plays on. Noah Harris’s beseeching vocals reel us in even further – that devastating falsetto, though! Verse two strips right back, before urgent riffs take flight and we gallop towards eternal bliss. It’s dynamically diverse, like an album’s worth of ideas executed to perfection within a single song. Circa 2004 was the last time this reviewer repeatedly hit repeat after a first listen (‘twas Lost In The Plot by The Dears, FYI).

For much of the creative process, Harris was in Paris, Vincent McIntrye was in Mexico and both Luke Thomas and Tom Dowling were in Melbourne. The EP’s title references the equidistant timezones between all three locations: eight hours separating Melbourne and Paris, Paris and Mexico.

Moody and cinematic, the piano-led Echo Grey goes somewhere altogether different. The underlying pathos in Harris’s vocals is so captivating. During Worth It?’s final quarter, an instrumental freakout drops in outta nowhere. Then it all descends into glitchy chaos – like aliens trying to make contact via dialup internet.

Submarine’s wonky, disorienting guitar lines add a submerged, underwater quality. There’s so much to sink your teeth into within just four songs. Yep, we’re officially fanning out over Fan Girl.

LABEL: INDEPENDENT RELEASE: OUT NOW

GENESIS OWUSU

POND

Terrestrials

Æ POND approached album number 11 with a set of rules in place: “No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No ‘Pink Floyd shit’.” You may ask yourself: aren’t at least two of those things synonymous with these loveable Perth trippers?

The band also repeatedly asked themselves a coupla quezzies – “Would Goths like it?”, “Could you have a beer to this?” – to ensure every song adhered to their self-created “goths at the pub” album motto. Colour me intrigued.

The opening Skyworks ponders the logic behind Australia Day’s celebratory annual fireworks display, with shimmering riffs and soaring synthlines emulating a pyrotechnic display. The supplied track by track acutely observes: “The river is bejewelled with magical glittering lights and loud bangs that remind some of canons and muskets.”

Casuarina was written after Cleveland Dodd committed suicide in the titular juvenile prison “where young people (disproportionately Indigenous) are kept in inhumane conditions”. The title of Two Hands may be inspired by a Heath Ledger film, but it’s about “when Rio Tinto blew up Juukun Gorge in WA’s Hammersley Range, destroying 46,000 years of archeological, cultural and spiritual significance”.

A pounding drumbeat and playful riffs permeate The Fatal Shore. Although “unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays” are lamented during the synth-tastic title track, it’s madcap in a rad, Split Enz kinda way. Guitars aptly impersonate sirens during Personal Hell’s breakdowns.

“Oh, Nashville, it’s my birthday/ I almost lost my mind in LA…” – closer Nashville (I’m Dying) is a pulsing kiss-off, resplendent with heavy drum breakdown.

Terrestrials may tackle some harrowing themes, but – instrumentally – it’s a fun listen. And POND’s virtuosic playing and mateship always shines through.

RUBY JONES

Souvenir

Æ “Talking through the demonstration/ I was holding on to your hand/ Bloody Marys while we’re in the air/ Hail Marys as we land…” – even without the evocative lyrical imagery, the opening title track’s instrumentation gives us all the wistful feels we need to know exactly what it’s about. Souvenir was written during Melbourne’s endless lockdowns, while Ruby Jones – previously of Clairy Browne & The Bangin’ Rackettes –reflected on past international touring stints, while trapped at home.

Feeling Of Falling reimagines COVID as a fickle lover. Featuring joyous tambourine, slide guitar, jaunty drumming and inquisitive bass, it’s a heartbreak song masked by cheery backing. “You don’t love me,” sung en masse, magnifies the hurt. Jess Deluca and Loretta Miller supply stunning BVs throughout the entire record, providing empowering support.

Jones’ family is based in East Gippsland, so her experiences of the 2019 bushfires that devastated the region also informed her latest set. Instrumentation is often cathartic, with meticulously placed percussive flourishes enlivening each song.

When her mum moved house, she sent Jones a truckload of belongings to sift through, which inspired Double Feature: a postcard from her St Kilda-based, 17-yearold self: “I’m working in the secondhand store/ But I got big dreams/ I’m 17 and I know everything.” This one’s mid-song vibeshift lands like a reassuring hug.

Elsewhere, Not Mine shares fantasies about an “almost-love”, Bad Ideas is riddled with Catholic guilt and Breaking My Own Heart explores the agonising torture of “watching friends remain in toxic relationships”.

Grief and longing are recurring themes throughout, but these songs are danceable enough to shake off your woes, too.

VIKA & LINDA

Where Do You

Come From?

Æ Nearly four decades into their illustrious career, Vika & Linda – surely the world champions of unison singing – were finally announced amongst this year’s ARIA Hall Of Fame inductees.

They’ve said the process of writing their incredible memoir, 2022’s No Bull, rekindled a desire to tell their own story through song and Where Do You Come From? is an unflinching, tender, poignant and important work.

“She called me coca cola/ My little sister too/ You’re not from around here are ya?/ Nobody looks like you..…” – Vika’s belting, which closes out the title track, cuts deep. We can feel her younger self’s humiliation and sadness – still potent after all these years.

At a Ben Salter gig in St Kilda, Vika & Linda fell in love with one of his songs, “cornered Ben in a ‘Bull sandwich’ to ask if [they] could record it”, post-show, and, voila! Their instincts were spot-on. The Bull sisters’ organ-backed, unison-sung take on Bliss – which augments into a rocking mantra – sounds like it was written just for them.

“Centuries/ The ancestors give you all you need” – written during a Whitsundays retreat with Toni Childs, Little Baby is a swinging lullaby. Waiting On The Kid, Linda’s heartfelt reflection on solo motherhood, explores the difficulties of being a touring muso mum and leaving your children behind. Vika candidly recounts “navigating menopause and early sobriety” in I Hit Pause.

Channelling their shared love of swimming, the Helen Shanahan-penned That’s How I Pray is as blissful and rejuvenating as a dip in the sea.

Shining examples that commitment and perseverance pays off, the Bull sisters just get better with age. Long may they show the future generations of aspiring artists how it’s done.

LABEL: MANGOVISION

RELEASE: 19 JUN

LABEL: INDEPENDENT

RELEASE: 6 MAY

LABEL: MUSHROOM MUSIC RELEASE: 5 JUN

LINA

WORDS BY JACOB MCCORMACK

In an ode to the mother-child relationship and the unconditional love that accompanies that, LINA has explored the intricacies of its entanglement in her debut SUCKER.

Æ And yet the album carries so much more, as she delves into the coexistence of joy and grief.

Sonically, it’s a narratorial undulation from shifting driving house beats and euphoric electronic production to melting piano riffs and LINA’s abyssal melodies and lyrics. Weaving the eclecticism of the album together is a consistent and velvety-warm undercurrent – a musical representation of the care applied to the macro and the micro.

With two singles already shared – the journeying Can You Feel the Rhythm and the crescendoing anthem Still So Young – the full album is set for release on Friday, 26 June.

The album is being pressed onto vinyl too, with pre-orders now open for a lucky-dip range of colours. To celebrate its release, Lina is hosting an intimate and unique listening experience at Tender in Brunswick on Wednesday, 17 June.

It won’t be your standard listening party, though. She will be facilitating a 30-minute gentle yoga session that will flow into a meditative absorption of the full album. The evening will pair these two passions for LINA in a collaboration inspired by the connections she has formed over the years.

“My friend Lily and I had run a Sofar Sounds gig where I livesoundtracked ambient music to her teaching a yoga class,” states LINA. “The seed was planted in that moment, and since then, I’ve become a yoga teacher.

“With the softness, warmth and slowness in a lot of these songs, it’s going to be a great way to showcase the album as well as integrate both of those worlds. We exist in a fast-paced attention economy where we are constantly giving, and so I hope this event can offer people an opportunity to slow down, be with their breath and themselves and enjoy my music.

“I couldn’t think of a better way to premiere the album than through both of my great current loves: movement and music.”

“It’s taken a lot from me, but it’s now starting to give a lot back. When I sit and listen to it, I realise the hard work is paying off, and that I’m able to let go of past chapters.”

The sound of the album lends itself suitably to such a listening experience – one that has come about through the pursuit of authenticity.

“As my taste continues to expand, I’ve started to integrate ingredients from other people’s songs that I really like into my own music,” LINA outlines. “And the chill, dancey, housey tracks are something that I’d wanted to make for ages, but I didn’t really know how until it happened.

“For some of those songs, I actually used this program called Splice, which allows you to sift through different samples. Using that as a launch pad was really creatively enabling. You can almost hear the fun that I’m having in the Can You Feel the Rhythm and Defrost (ur soul).”

As a whole project, she danced between engaging with the individual songs in their uniqueness and constructing the broader idea as a whole.

“I think I had to zoom out enough to see that it was going to eventually be a whole album, but then in order to get each song done, I had to zoom in and focus on it track by track, recognising what was most important to me in the moment.

“When I was sitting down to piece the body of work together, it all became this harmonious revealing of a thread – a through line that rather unintentionally flows throughout.

“During the whole process, I’ve been very intentional about the lightness and the darkness in the album – expressing a mid-twenties existentialism paired with falling in love, falling out of love, realising you’ve got work to do, all the while putting myself in the shoes of my friends who are mothers.

“The album weaves all that love, grief and joy, exploring the highs and lows, through upbeat moments as well as darker melancholy moments.”

Ultimately, much like the themes LINA has explored throughout SUCKER, the project has involved so much giving. It’s only been since finishing it and listening back to it that a reciprocity has emerged.

“It’s taken a lot from me, but it’s now starting to give a lot back. When I sit and listen to it, I realise the hard work is paying off, and that I’m able to let go of past chapters.”

As much a process of catharsis as an emergent expression of creativity, SUCKER is a serpentine journey through the possibilities of humanhood. It acts as an honest and evocative introduction to LINA, ahead of what will likely be a life spent in music.

LINA

WHERE: TENDER

WHEN: 17 JUN

GIG GUIDE

JUNE 2026

THU 04 JUN

VMO A.K.A VIOLENT MAGIC ORCHESTRA

The Night Cat. Fitzroy. 8pm. $59.90.

NCM X PSEUDO: STIGMERGY

National Communication Museum. Hawthorn. 10am. $18–24.

DRIFTING CLOUDS

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8pm.

ANAIIS

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 8pm. $59–69.

ANGLERR. THE RARTEL, MOBHEAD

Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 7.30pm.

THE MUSIC OF DR WHO

FT: The Western Brothers Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $45.

ALMA ZYGIER

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $38.

THE BETA BAND. DEATH IN VEGAS Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm. $99.90.

LA MAUVAISE RÉPUTATION

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 7pm.

VOYAGE INTO INFINITY

Festival Hall. West Melbourne. 7pm. $59.

GURNS THURS

New Guernica. Collingwood. 9pm.

SAPPHIRE. KAIDEN XU & BAND, DELPHI

The Tote. Collingwood. 7.30pm. $11.25.

DIMENSIONS OF INCOMPREHENSIBILITIES

FT: SKP, Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung, Mystic Eyes, more The Merri Creek Tavern. Northcote. 8pm. $10–15.

SAMUEL R SAFFERY + NOTHINGE

Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Brunswick. 8.30pm. Free.

KICKIN’ THE B AT 303: 15 YEARS OF HAMMOND SESSIONS

Bar 303. Northcote. 8pm. $30.

XAVIERSOBASED

Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 7.30pm. $81.50.

MAAJELA.

IMMY OWUSU, SENSIBLE J, MALAIKA MFALME Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 7.30pm. $12.25.

TR/ST

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 8.30pm. $49–89.

FRI 05 JUN

NIGHT OF THE DISENFRANCHISED

FT: Prannay Sastry & Co, The Chop, Materia, Pomp Art Bad Decisions Bar. Fitzroy. 7.30pm. $20. FAIRTRADE NARCOTICS. LUNAR LAGOON Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm. Free.

INTERVAL: COTTO Glamorama. Fitzroy. 10pm. $15–30.

SOUL OBSESSION DUO

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm.

GLENN WAVERLEY & THE MENTONES

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm.

BJORN AGAIN: ABBA FOREVER TOUR

Clocktower Centre. Moonee Ponds. 7.30pm. $85.

SEUN KUTI & EGYPT 80

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 8pm. $49–79.

DAISY KILBOURNE

Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Brunswick. 8.30pm. $23.46.

S.A.S.H, PULSE & REVOLVER FRIDAYS

FT: Janeret + Seb Zito. Asteria, Mike Callander, Kiti, Acid Safari, Henry Who, Joseph Devlin, CHARBINK$, YIND, Rachel May Revolver Upstairs. Prahran. 10pm. $21.42–31.62.

DOLLS.

THE ANTICS, SANDY DISH

Old Bar. Fitzroy. 8pm. $15.

NEW GUERNICA FRIDAYS

New Guernica. Collingwood. 9.30pm.

THE CALABRIANS

Bar 303. Northcote. 5pm. Free.

10 YEARS OF LAST CHANCE

FT: The Clinch, The Dive Bombs, Mongrel, Smut Brigade

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 8pm. $11.25.

TANTANA

Brunswick Ballroom. Brunswick. 8.30pm. $41.82.

CONRAD SEWELL

The Night Cat. Fitzroy. 7.30pm. $60.36.

DESCENDENTS. PINCH POINTS, THE SHORTS

Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $89.90.

FUJIDEATHCULT. HARMINIA, SANSZU, TWO STAR

The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 6pm. $23.46.

SERPENTRY. BENTHAMS HEAD, ELECTRIC FUNERAL, DEEP MAJESTIC THUNDER

Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $17.85.

SPIRIT: SUPERNATURAL–THE SANTANA SONGBOOK

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $45. TIARYN

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 7.30pm. $45–50.

STIMPIES

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7.30pm. $25.

ALINTA & THE JAZZ EMPERORS

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 9pm. $48.

SECOND HAND HIGH. CHICK, LEFT AT THE AVENUE

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8pm. $13.30–18.40.

HOT GLUE. HUMAN NOISE, UNIT

The Tote. Collingwood. 8pm. $23.50.

DOVE CREEK. THE FOXY JUNES, KEV SEV

Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 8.30pm. $17.35.

VOYAGE INTO INFINITY

Festival Hall. West Melbourne. 7pm. $59.

ADRIAN SHERWOOD

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 8pm. $75.

GLOBAL UNDERGROUND

FT: Sasha. Danny Howells, James Zabelia, Anthony Pappa Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 7pm. GOOD MUSIC PRESENTS ALL STAR Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 5pm. Free–$10.

SAT 06 JUN

THE VEE BEES. BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS, SCARNON, POPPIN MOMMAS, SACRAMENTO SWEATERS

Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 7pm. $20.

LA LA LAND IN CONCERT

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 7.30pm. $119.90.

LOCAL LABELS: ROOLETTE RECORDS

FT: Mystery Daughter, Hannah Kate, Maxine Gillon Cactus Room. Thornbury. 2pm. Free. DOOTFEST IN SPACE

The Motley Bauhaus. Carlton. 8.30pm. $25.83. TEAM PRANAVAM PRESENTS PRAVASI Clocktower Centre. Moonee Ponds. 6.30pm. $15–50.

ANDREW SILL

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm. SHAKIRA. LAURA ALVEREZ Leadbeater Hotel. Richmond. 8pm. $44.90–51.

STEAMBOAT WHISTLERS

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm.

THE JUNGLE GIANTS. THE TULLAMARINES, TEAR DRIVE Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm. $101.10.

DIPLOID.

SAW IN HALF, KERATIN, KRISTOL PISSTOL, TEETH DREAMS

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 7.30pm. $23.50.

RUBY JONES. RILEY CATHERALL

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8.30pm. $29.10.

B-SIDE & FRIENDS: ALL NIGHT LONG

FT: Bellxsxs, Mimosa, Newsta

The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 11pm. Free.

TILLY VICKERS

WILLIS. ELLA ION, SUNNY MORRIS Curtin Hotel. Carlton. 8pm. $27.95.

EXHUMED. ASHEN Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $75.80.

ALARMS.

LEONARDO’S

ROBOT, ...A.T.M, CANARY BONES, ABSELOM, QUEEN HYENA Bar 303. Northcote. 7pm. $16.50–20.

THE LINDA RONSTADT SHOW

FT: Lisa Mio, Wild Dreamers

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $40.

LEHMO: CAMPER VAN GO!

The Round. Nunawading. 8pm. $32.

LIOR.

ANITA LESTER Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8pm. $69.

SOPHISTICATED

LADY: A TRIBUTE TO JAZZ’S FIRST LADIES OF SONG

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 9pm. $48.

WHY THE HELL DO WE HAVE A KING?

BIRTHDAY BASH

FT: Brando Rising, Remit, The Clags

The Tote. Collingwood. 3pm.

PAUL GRABOWSKY & VINCE JONES

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 6pm. $55.

KRISP. THE SATTS, POWDER BLUE, KEV SEV Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $17.85.

ROWENA WISE. DANIKA

Shotkickers. Thornbury. 8pm. $32.

CHRISTOPHER

TUBBS: ALL NIGHT LONG

New Guernica. Collingwood. 10pm. $15–20.

DEAN TURNLEY

Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 1pm.

DAY TRIPPER

FT: Kae Tempest, Chanel Beads, Adrian Sherwood, Kahil El’Zabar, The Bats, Discovery Zone, The Congos, more Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 12pm. $99–119.

BABBA

Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $45–60.

THU 11 JUN

YUKI CHIBA

Corner Hotel. Richmond. 7.30pm. $77.20.

ME IN A DREAM. TEXAS MILK BAR, THE MOOPS Workers Club. Fitzroy. 7pm. $15.

CORTISA STAR & NEW YORK

The Night Cat. Fitzroy. 7.30pm. $54.90. NAHKO. The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 7pm. $74.46.

JAZMINE MARY. MACROCARPA

The Merri Creek Tavern. Northcote. 8pm. $20–30.

CASS AWARE. THE OPALS, SEVEN POUND HALO

Curtin Hotel. Carlton. 7.30pm. $17.75.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IN CONCERT

FT: Melbourne

Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 7.30pm. $81–161.

DANNY ROSS

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 7pm.

LUME

Bar 303. Northcote. 8pm. $15.

PAPERWEIGHT

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $23.50.

DEBORAH CONWAY & WILLY ZYGIER

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $50.

MATT AMY’S REALLY BIG BAND

FT: Sarah Maclaine

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $48.

ANTI ITCH CREAM. BETTY, BACCHUS HARSH, CONEPUNCHER, DROOLER

The Tote. Collingwood. 8pm. $23.50.

GOOD COMPANY

ENTERTAINMENT

PRESENTS:

THE BIG CHILLOUT

FEAT: Judah Kelly, Asabi Goodman

Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7.30pm. $49.90–79.90.

BELLA FIOR. NICCI

TWENTYMAN, EMMA YUE

Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 7pm.

THE BATS.

COOL SOUNDS

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 7pm.

PURITY RING Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 7.30pm. $89.90.

HOME SHOW: LILY WALKER

Shirley Burke Theatre. Parkdale. 6pm. Free.

FRI 12 JUN

THE SUPERJESUS. THE ART, THE AFTER

Prince Bandroom. St Kilda. 7pm. $59.

ORPHIX. VIOLET TENDENCIES, BLACK WATTLE WITCHES

Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 7.30pm.

MJ HALLORAN & SEAN SIMMONS BAND

The Merri Creek Tavern. Northcote. 8.30pm. $20.

JON STEVENS Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm.

KRUL. WHIP!, CRY CYCLOPS

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 8.30pm. $11.25.

DOWNSTAIRS DISCO

FT: Steely Ann, Mikey Goodfellow Wax Music Lounge. Melbourne. 9pm. Free.

MR. DOILY. STRAWBZ, MUDBATH Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $15.

ARON!

The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $54.90.

THE BYPASSERS. JUST FOR A DAY, KXX, JAMES LLEWELLYN

Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Brunswick. 8.30pm. Free.

BUG HUNT. NPCEDE, DOPPLERHAUS

Old Bar. Fitzroy. 8pm. $17.35. HUGH CORNWELL Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8pm. $77.60.

BATTLESTAR ACOUSTICA

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm. ORIGIN

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $65.80.

CAROUSE Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm.

JESSICA YOUNG QUINTET

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 6pm. $45. THE COUNTDOWN YEARS Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $40.

THE BOOK OF MORMON

Princess Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm.

OPA! BATO BALKAN BRASS Shotkickers. Thornbury. 8.30pm. $29.25.

ROD COOTE. OFTHEWILD, ABIGAIL GRACE

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8pm. $25.

CHAT PILE. BEASTWARS

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 7.45pm. $86.20.

SEA WOLVES HOWL The Round. Nunawading. 7.30pm. $57.

ANDREW DE SILVA’S DEDICATION TO PRINCE: BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $40–60.

SAT 13 JUN

AM//PM EMO NIGHT

FT: Nightlight, Closure, Headstrong

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 8pm. $20–29.10.

JORDAN HART. FINOJET

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8pm. $40.

BIG LEAGUE. SKIPTONS, HECTICT, GREVILLEA HEDGE

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 8pm. $16.35.

ENZYME XX

FT: Blood In The Champagne, DevilMonkey, Chiron Mamma Chen’s. Footscray. 8pm. Free.

AMAROO:

CITY CIRCUS

FT: Low Rez, Duarte, dlm, Jacqui Monitto, The Doof Doctors Spiegel Haus Melbourne. Melbourne. 3pm. $33.

THE SLOPPY JALOPIES. PERCUSSION BLUES, SALMON SISTERS, LAURA & THE HELL CUTZ

The Tote. Collingwood. 8pm. $16.35.

LEON THOMAS Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm.

STEAMBOAT WHISTLERS

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm. CLAMM

Curtin Hotel. Carlton. 8pm. $27.95.

TIM CLARK + RORY NEWMAN

Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Brunswick. 8.30pm. Free.

STITCH WITH SAPPHO

Kingston Arts Centre. Moorabbin. 11am. Free.

ALEX HUGHES

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IN CONCERT (MATINEE)

FT: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 1pm. $81–161.

RUDI SOUND SYSTEM

Bar 303. Northcote. 8pm. Free.

THE ROYAL MOTOWN REVUE

FT: Iseula, Paul Slattery & The Horns of Hip Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 9pm. $48.

MARK SEYMOUR. ALLY ROW

The Capital. Bendigo. 7.30pm. $74.90.

AKA ZEB. ZEPHERIN SAINT, ALICE PAYNE

Wax Music Lounge. Melbourne. 9pm.

THE COUNTDOWN

YEARS Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $40.

STARSHINE: TRIBUTE TO STEVIE NICKS & FLEETWOOD MAC

Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8pm. $40.40–51.10.

FOXY SHAZAM. BIG RED FIRE TRUCK

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $86.20.

LUCKY

Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $17.85.

SOUTHSIDE

WINTER WARMER

Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $32–44.

SEA WOLVES

HOWL The Round. Nunawading. 1.30pm. $57.

DIMMIE FEST

FT: Grindhouse, Full Tone Generator, Swidgen, TTTDC, Tench, The KREEP 500, The Lips, Donghouse, The Wardens, Chrome Gypsy Shotkickers. Thornbury. 2pm. $30.

VIKA & LINDA

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 7.30pm. $89–99.

AMOR ANDINO

FT: Lavandita, Trago Amargo, Sorbo Amplio, DJ Maria Piña, Nodox Collective Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 8pm. $25–35.70.

THU 18 JUN

MARTY ROBBINS’ GUNFIGHTER BALLADS & TRAIL SONGS

FT: Henry Wagons, Emily Lubitz, The Counterfeit Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $35–60.

THE BOOK OF MORMON

Princess Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm.

NCM X PSEUDO: STIGMERGY

National Communication Museum. Hawthorn. 10am. $18–24.

HITS FROM ELTON JOHN & THE DIVAS Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $40.

OUR SEVENTH STRING FUNDRAISER

Brunswick Artists’ Bar. Brunswick. 7.30pm. $18.36.

PRESS CLUB. GREVILLEA, GREAT

AUSTRALIAN BANK

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $35.

SHAKING. TEETH DREAMS, SOPHIE ROSE

The Tote. Collingwood. 7.30pm. $11.25.

HOWLING WALSHE

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 7pm.

THE JACK EARLE TRIO

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $45.

STEREOLAB. MICK HARVEY, AMANDA ACEVEDO

Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm.

ITALIAN SERENATAS

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 7pm. $45–167.

FRI 19 JUN

ANTISKEPTIC. WISHFUL THINKING, DRASTIC PARK

Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $39.80.

OPERATION BIG JAKE BOSSTONE

Dogs Bar. St Kilda. 7pm. Free.

3000: FRIENDS OF THE PROGRAM

FT: Bakkes & Chanz, The Marauders, Mental AZ, Korboy & Rief, DJ Rellik, DJ Kilo Revolver Upstairs. Prahran. 8.30pm. Free.

ALT-REVOLT: THE FILTHIEST

HEAVY TRIBUTE

GATHERING

FT: Ausländers–The Australian Rammstein Tribute Band, Cuckoo For Caca, Killing In The Dame–Rage Against the Machine Tribute Hotel Esplanade (aka The Espy). St Kilda. 8pm. $25.

JULIUS

RODRIGUEZ

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $35.

MARTY ROBBINS’ GUNFIGHTER BALLADS & TRAIL SONGS

FT: Henry Wagons, Emily Lubitz, The Counterfeit

Brunswick Ballroom. Brunswick. 8.30pm. $41.82.

GLENN WAVERLEY & THE MENTONES

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm.

ROCK & ROSE

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm. ORANGE ORANGE. NOTCH CUT, CAPGUN

The Tote. Collingwood. 8pm. $16.35.

WOODZ

Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 6pm. $109.

THE AUSTRALIAN EAGLES SHOW: 50 YEARS OF HOTEL CALIFORNIA

Clocktower Centre. Moonee Ponds. 7.30pm. $89.50.

NOCTURNA

FT: Jacquline Hyde, BoINK tHe CLoWN, Pixie Belle, Ugliest Hottie, Loxy, Neaira, Tate, DILONCÉ, LION, Ornette Coolman, RE_ IMAGE, ANNIE KEZ

The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 7pm. $38.76–48.96.

EAST GIPPSLAND WINTER FESTIVAL 2026 East Gippsland (Various locations). VIC. 10am.

JOHN SPLITHOFF

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8.30pm.

SEVIL SABAH: JAZZ WITH A TWIST Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 6.30pm. $45.

BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT. SOLKYRI, TREEBEARD Corner Hotel. Richmond. 7.30pm. $77.20.

JAMES EHNES WITH ORION WEISS

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 7.30pm. $79–139.

360. PEZ Honey Bar & Rooftop. Mildura. 7pm. $59.90.

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB TRIBUTE Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $35–60.

SEA WOLVES HOWL Shirley Burke Theatre. Parkdale. 7.30pm. $35.

ABC CLASSIC 100 IN CONCERT FT: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 7.30pm. $54–109.

SAT 20 JUN

MALIBU SPACEY. SUPA LUCIA The Merri Creek Tavern. Northcote. 8pm. $15.

GOOD MUSIC PRESENTS ALL STAR Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 5pm. Free–$10.

ABC CLASSIC 100 IN CONCERT (MATINEE) FT: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 2pm. $54–109.

RYAN OAKES Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8.30pm. $64.90.

BODY ELECTRIC DANCE: ELECTRIC DIVA Forum Theatre. Melbourne. 7pm. $65.

PRO TEAM

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 8pm. $20.

JOE LAF

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm. MERKANI.

JUMP THE FENCE, SECOND HAND HIGH Leadbeater Hotel. Richmond. 7.30pm. $12–15.

PAULINI & TIM

CAMPBELL: ELECTRIFYING 80S

The Round. Nunawading. 7.30pm. $84.90.

UNMUTED

FT: Srirachi, Caution, Saieesh

The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 7pm. $23.46–28.56.

STAY GOLD: TO THE END

FT: Future Static, Ocean Grove, more Stay Gold. Brunswick. 7pm. $39.80.

THE CROONER’S DREAM: CROSBY, MARTIN & SINATRA

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 6.30pm. $45.

QUEEN ROCKS Clocktower Centre. Moonee Ponds. 7.30pm. $74.90.

GUITAR KINGDOM Bar 303. Northcote. 5pm.

GRAND WAZOO PRESENTS THE SOUL QUEENS Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $55.

ITALIAN SERENATAS

Melbourne Recital Centre. Southbank. 5pm. $45–167.

SPOUSE. HOUND, THE MIDDLE CHAPTER, JAZZ TIGER, WRIDING

The Tote. Collingwood. 7pm. $23.50.

NATHAN CAVALERI

Kingston City Hall. Moorabbin. 7.30pm. $55. NON. GIANT, SHIPYARD, SKY SCRAPER

SKY

Shotkickers. Thornbury. 7.30pm. $23.80.

ULLAH. DAISYPICKER, DOG DOOR

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 8pm. $20.

CELEBRATING TOM WAITS

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 7pm. $79.90.

HOPEFUL FEW. CORNERSTONE, MATT CYNNER, THE ROB & PARAS SHOW Workers Club. Fitzroy. 1pm. $12. WORKING ON A MYSTERY: A COLLECTION OF TOM PETTY TUNES…

Memo Music Hall. St Kilda. 7pm. $39–70. LAST DINOSAURS. BAD SUNS

Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 7.30pm. $79.90.

THU 25 JUN

CHASING GHOSTS

Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 7.30pm. $29.10.

TONY YANG QUARTET: THE MUSIC OF KENNY BURRELL “MIDNIGHT BLUE” Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 8pm. $45. THE WIGGLES Festival Hall. West Melbourne. 10am.

VINDICTA

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 8pm. $59.10.

IN SHADOWS (DALAM BAYANG-BAYANG)

FT: Liang Luscombe, Isobel D’Cruz Barnes, Haneen Mahmood Martin

Northcote Town Hall. Northcote. 7.30pm. $38.

EAST GIPPSLAND WINTER FESTIVAL 2026 East Gippsland (Various locations). VIC. 10am.

SONGS FOR LOVERS

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $40.

A TRIP TO VIENNA FT: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall (Arts Centre Melbourne). Melbourne. 7.30pm. $20–139.

FRI 26 JUN

SUCCULENT FUNK

FT: Sampology, Poli Pearl, Miles Ahead, Navy Blue Radio, O Honey, Emil LP Solace. Melbourne. 9pm. $25.

ROYALE WITH CHEESE: THE ULTIMATE 90’S ROCK SHOW

Max Watt’s. Melbourne. 7pm. $38.25.

MILLY JOEL

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm.

DALLAS FRASCA

The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar. North Melbourne. 8pm. $40.

KINEMATIC

Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Brunswick. 8pm.

CRISTINA SERAFY: ESTE SENTIMIENTO–A NIGHT OF LATIN JAZZ

Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 6.30pm. $45. THE SMITHS CELEBRATION: QUEEN IS DEAD 40TH ANNIVERSARY

Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8.30pm. $28.05.

CHEAP-SKATE–CHEAP YEAR: VOLUME 2

FT: Pepper La Floyd Lulie Tavern. Abbotsford. 9pm. Free.

DARTZ

The Tote. Collingwood. 8pm. $20–25.

DAMI IM: STORMY WEATHER –AN INTIMATE

EVENING

Bird’s Basement. Melbourne. 7.30pm. $55.

IN SHADOWS (DALAM BAYANG-BAYANG)

FT: Liang Luscombe, Isobel D’Cruz Barnes, Haneen Mahmood Martin Northcote Town Hall. Northcote. 7.30pm. $38.

RUBY & THE TUESDAYS. ALICE ISABELLA, TWISTED FIX Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $12.75.

MIDNIGHT VIOLET. BITIMUS, WAGE CUT Retreat Hotel. Brunswick. 7.30pm. $17.95.

MENTAL AS ANYTHING Northcote Theatre. Northcote. 7pm. $99.

CHASING GHOSTS (FAREWELL SHOW)

FT: DENNI, Abselom, Oblivion.

Senator Lidia Thorpe, Celeste Liddle, Uncle Kutcha, WTC Uncle Bill Northcote Social Club. Northcote. 7.30pm.

BAKE LAUNCH

FT: Scowls, Chaperone, Callystha, Elkie Kershaw Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 7.30pm. $16.35.

SAT 27 JUN

STILL CLASSY: TEN YEARS OF A CLASS ACT

FT: Ilana Charnelle

The Motley Bauhaus. Carlton. 8.30pm. $32.92.

DON TETTO

The Night Cat. Fitzroy. 8pm. $75.37.

LOUNGE OF THE FLAMINGO

FT: Paris Wells, Finley François Paris Cat Jazz Club. Melbourne. 6.30pm. $45.

TIM RICHARDS

The Bay Hotel. Mornington. 9pm.

THE STORY OF THE CLASH & THE SPECIALS

FT: Black Market Clash, Loonee Tunes

Brunswick Ballroom. Brunswick. 6.30pm. $41.82.

THE VEIL. NONTINUUM, OAR, BRUXIST Bendigo Hotel. Collingwood. 7.30pm.

RITUAL: GENESIS OF THE VOID

FT: Carcinoid, Cryptivore, Sufferance, Chief Whip The Toff In Town. Melbourne. 6pm. $38.76.

THE DROPKICKS

Leadbeater Hotel. Richmond. 7pm. $10.75.

HOMEBASS Bar 303. Northcote. 8pm.

MELANI. WILL CLIFT, HUTTON Workers Club. Fitzroy. 8pm. $17.85–23.50.

GO-JO: THE GO-JO VARIETY SHOW Corner Hotel. Richmond. 8pm. $40.40.