2ser Gig Guide

Some music moves you. Some music rearranges your DNA.

Machine Girl does the latter — a full-throttle sensory overload channeled through breakneck BPMs, live drums, digital distortion, and raw, unfiltered emotion. Equal parts rave weapon and noise ritual, the project has become a lifeline for freaks of every breed — ravers, metalheads, gamers, goths, industrialists. It doesn’t fit into genre. It tears genre apart and feeds it back to you, pixelated and burning. (Ticketek)

PEPTALK, Tonix, Gia Darcy and Merci, Mercy are putting together a night to celebrate some of the best indie pop bands in Australia. Female fronted and diverse, this lineup is made for a party. (Moshtix)

Join Sydneys finest GEE TEE along with WA powerpop rockers PLEASANTS and synthpunk freakz GHOULIES at Marrickville Bowling Club, Friday June 20. (Oztix)

Cloud Control, the Blue Mountains band who soundtracked a generation, are reuniting in 2025 to celebrate 15 years of their debut album Bliss Release. Welcoming back their founding bassist Jeremy Kelshaw, the band will play together live in their original line up, for the first time in over a decade. Known for their lush harmonies, psych-folk sound, and compelling live shows, the band will launch the first of their 2025 anniversary celebrations at River Sounds festival, performing Bliss Release, front to back, as a special tribute to the record that opened the world for them.

Since their last show in Sydney, Party Dozen have played:

3 shows in Victoria
16 shows in the USA
2 shows in Utrecht(!)
2 shows in Paris
2 shows in Brussels
4 shows in the UK
11 shows in other European cities
Byron, Brisbane and Perth

Sydney. It’s been too long.

Let them make it up to you with a hard hitting night on home ground at Marrickville Bowling Club, with friends The Blamers and Exit Mould.

One night only. Party Dozen in Marrickville. Before they fuck off back to Europe in July.

SATURDAY 21 JUNE WITH FRONT END LOADER + TANTICHRIST + MORE SPECIAL GUESTS TBA.

Sydney-based beatmaker Julien Mier releases his debut album “Gradually” on Barcelona label Lapsus. A beautifully crafted electronic album which tells the story of his moving to Australia and re-rooting over a nine year period. Joining Julien for a get down in the PCB grotto will be local legends Land Systems and Sofia Carey!

more details TBA

Stones Throw and Crown Ruler team up to welcome two of the label’s most influential artists Knxwledge and Mndsgn to Gadigal Land (Sydney).

Since stepping onto the scene in 2010, Knxwledge has continued to deliver the goods with impeccable style. A member of the Stones Throw family since 2015, Knxwledge boasts an impressive catalogue of music, collaborations, loyal fans and now a fresh Grammy win as one half of NxWorries (alongside Anderson .Paak).

A defining fixture in LA’s scene, Knxwledge’s beatmaking prowess has seen him craft beats for the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, and Earl Sweatshirt.

This tour will mark the hip-hop beatmaker’s first return to Australia since 2012, and no doubt this one’s been long overdue.

Sharing the stage is none other than Stones Throw OG and Crown Ruler fav, Mndsgn. The accomplished musician has had music running through his veins from a young age and is responsible for not only an array of supreme personal productions, but work as a co-producer with some of Hip-Hop’s biggest names.

Expect an exclusive showcase of old, new and unreleased material from these two trailblazing artists.

Rounding out the night, we’ll have featured performances from Stones Throw Asia label manager Kota, plus local flavours served by Setwun and Bam Sam.

The Nagging Doubts first appeared in 2019, and since then tracks from their remarkable discography (available on streaming services) have been played on radio throughout Australia, Europe, UK, USA & Canada, confirming that these guys are one of the best young Indie bands in Australia.

After a lengthy break, the Doubties are back sounding better than ever as fantastic recent shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Wollongong have demonstrated.

The band will release their debut album, ‘Panic Growth’, on vinyl shortly.

The Night Packers have established a reputation as one of the most exciting and entertaining bands on the Sydney live music scene since forming in 2022. The band draws upon old school Indie post-punk influences such as The Fall, Wire, Husker Du and Tactics, and their two singles and an EP to date (also available on streaming services) have all been played on community radio extensively in Sydney & Melbourne. Be sure to arrive at 8.00pm to catch The Night Packers in action!

Following on from their ARIA Top 20 album together as The Ferguson Rogers Process, Style And Or Substance, Tim Rogers and Lance Ferguson take it to the stage with a series of live launches.

To mark the occasion Lance Ferguson has reinvigorated the collaboration that started it all between him and Rogers, 2013’s “I Got Burned”. Christened as “The FRP Remix”, the smoky, Bluesy Funk of the original has been whisked away to the Balearic Islands circa 1983 with a surprising beachy Disco feel, a sound which perfectly complements the slinky Rock / Disco melange of Style And Or Substance. This is the first of two FRP remixes planned leading up to the live shows.

With a band lead by Ferguson and featuring members of The Bamboos and Melbourne Boogie maestros Mondo Freaks and with one of this country’s greatest ever showmen on vocals, these shows will be like nothing else Australian audiences have witnessed before.

“For me, there’s a looseness in the Ferguson Rogers Process. Just in terms of the forms, it can get wild,” Ferguson said.
“We’ve already started mucking around with the songs, stretching out some, tightening others; just some pure, indulgent fun,” Rogers adds. “It did remind me of the two Bamboo tours that I’ve done, which were life-threatening fun.”
“Friends that I’ve had for ages who saw our first show said that it was just joy watching people dance, ‘cause it doesn’t happen often at You Am I shows, at Hard-Ons shows” he continues.
“Playing something with dancing, you can just forget about the woes of this challenging world that continues to unfurl in challenging ways, and you’re in a room with people and actually letting them just freak out for a bit. It’s one of those times where you feel you’re actually doing something completely worthwhile.”

The Electorate launch their new LP By Design, on July 5 with very special guests Rubber Necker and Restless Leg @ Waywards.

The Electorate return to the stage to launch their sophomore LP By Design, out May 30 on Love As Fiction Records.

Featuring the singles Face of a Giant, Peace Love & Kindness, The Great Divide and Don’t Go Out, the new Electorate LP is a rough and tumble ride through their love of bent pop and glittering melodies. With half of By Design produced by Wayne Connolly (Teskey Brothers/Underground Lovers/Babe Rainbow) and half with Simon Berckelman (Polish Club/Boy+Bear) the new Electorate LP is one that Backseat Mafia have called “majestic and anthemic”, and the AU Review “drawing an arc to the iconic Go-Betweens and their beloved new wave Aussie indie-rock.”

By Design is the follow up LP to The Electorate’s 2020 debut and 2SER feature’ You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost’, which Rolling Stone called “A stunning debut….one of the year’s best.” Featuring members of Big Heavy Stuff, The Apartments, Knievel, The Templebears and Atticus, The Electorate bring their best to to the front to launch By Design.

Rubber Necker have to be seen to be believed. The sounds that come off stage are danceable, warped, and thoroughly entertaining. Initially sold to one member of The Electorate as the Dead Kennedys colliding with the B-52s, the truth is, Rubber Necker defy description, and are a brilliant Sydney secret that won’t stay that way for long.

Restless Leg very kindly kick the night off with their collision of Flying Nun at CBGB’s sound and fury. Propelled by a driving rhythm section over which Ben Chamie’s songs shine, this is the last show Restless Leg will play in a while, and their last before they tour NZ with their latest brilliant opus, Dance Around My Head.

Dog Trumpet is spearheaded by brothers Peter O’Doherty and Reg Mombassa, original members of iconic Aria award winning and Hall of Fame band Mental As Anything. Featuring Bernie Hayes on Bass and Vocals and Declan O’Doherty on Drums and Vocals.

Dog Trumpet will be launching their new album, Dog Trumpet favourites and Mentals classics @ Camelot Lounge Marrickville NSW – Album launch show. Saturday 5th July 2025.

Dog Trumpet have a brand new single Live Forever written by Reg Mombassa and is a fascinating look into our universe and our collective future. The song is from their new album. A distinctive blending of psychedelia, folk and blues, the album probes the perils and absurdities of human existence.

Your favorite music crawl returns after a short break on Sunday, July 13th, taking over 25+ venues and hosting 100+ artists of all levels and genres!

We’re celebrating Newtown’s unique music, culture, and community by linking the diverse businesses and venues into one long musical journey up and down King Street, Enmore and Erskineville Roads.

The aim of the Crawl is to shine a spotlight on the variety of establishments and talent that make up this truly unique melting pot of Sydney.

As always, entry will be FREE to all participating venues! Curators and line-ups will be announced in the coming months via the King Street Crawl website and social media pages (hit follow to stay up to date!)

VENUES:
Bootleggers / BUDDY’S / Coopers Hotel / Kelly’s On King / Marly Bar / Mary’s / MoshPit Bar / Newtown Hotel / Palimino Lounge / Pleasure Club / The Bank Hotel / The Duke / The Enmore Hotel / The Hive Bar / The Midnight Special / The Trocadero / The Union / The Vanguard / The Vic / The Warren View / Tokyo Sing Song / Upstairs Marly / Uncanny / Waywards / Websters + more to be announced

Blueprints, featuring Mia Schoen and Marc Regueiro-McKelvie, step onto vinyl following their cassette releases ‘Blueprints’ and ‘Celestial Spheres.’ Known for their work in the Melbourne underground band New Estate, this dynamic duo blends avant-art-pop with moods from fractured folk to anthemic Beatlesque tunes.

Their new 7-inch ‘Artichoke’ elevates their sound with a skull-crushing disco beat, wild vocals, and stunning instrumentation, including the tracks ‘Bibbulmun’ and ‘Game Show.’ Schoen’s contributions to Sleepy Township, Huon, Possum Moods, and Powerful Owl, paired with Regueiro-McKelvie’s solo project Popolice and collaborations with Jess Rebeiro and Teeth & Tongue, highlight their prolific creativity and innovation.

Join Blueprints, along with Dumbells and Married Man for an unforgettable launch event.

The original introspective collective The Gin Club are strapping on the chaps and heading out for a run of shows this July.  Formed in Brisbane in the early noughts by a group of friends at an open mic night, the group has since gone on to release five full length albums featuring their blend of folk-rock, alt-country and indie. With songwriting and singing duties shared among all ten members of their ever-expanding roster, they’ve toured extensively throughout Australia as well as to NZ and the USA. The tour will happily coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 2005 release of the group’s sophomore album Fear of the Sea which contained much loved singles “Gabriel” and “Drugflowers”.

Currently in the midst of a riotous UK tour performing songs about “f*cking and drinking and hanging landlords,” acclaimed Irish outfit The Mary Wallopers are thrilled to announce their live return to Sydney this September!

In between inducing mosh pits at Glastonbury and selling-out serious venues across the UK, US, Europe and beyond, it’s been a heady rise for the Dundalk outfit, their packed live schedule over the past two years seeing their popularity ascend sky high. Quickly establishing themselves as a live phenomenon not to be missed, the band are set to return to our shores – proudly presented by Frontier Touring. Led by brothers Charles and Andrew Hendy, The Mary Wallopers first shot to fame back in 2020, thanks to their lockdown YouTube shows, which saw the group build a makeshift pub in their home, livestreaming (often hilarious) trad sessions. Since then, and thanks to relentless gigging across the globe and the band’s irreverent, gleeful rebelliousness, the Wallopers have reached new heights… as recent profiles in in The Guardian UK and NME this month attest:

‘The Mary Wallopers have become a word-of-mouth live phenomenon. At the heart of this is their ability to move seamlessly between crackling cabaret-style banter, raucous tales of pintmen, laughter and getting laid, chaotic, Pogues-style punk velocity – limbs and spilled pints everywhere – and pin-drop silence for heartrending songs about the vicious crimes of the Catholic church, or renowned Irish Traveller singer Pecker Dunne’ – The Guardian

‘In just a few years, the group have amassed an international following with their rambunctiously spirited interpretations of the Irish songs of yesteryear, injecting a thrillingly contemporary political zeal into a songbook that was dying to be dragged into the 21st century’ – NME

The Mary Wallopers take on century old songs and new blistering originals and are truly one of a kind. The upcoming tour follows the band’s acclaimed 2024 second album Irish Rock ‘n’ Roll, and recent EP Home Boys Home.

Hearts out, arms aloft, live on stage The Mary Wallopers are full of fire and incendiary energy. Don’t miss these shows!

Brant Bjork Trio return to Australia and NZ this September to promote the release of their first album in the current Trio format, “Once Upon a Time in the Desert”. With long time collaborator Mario Lalli (Yawning Man, Fatso Jetson) on the Bass the band creates a fluid heavy groove that shows why they are collectively known as the forefathers of Desert Rock.  Brant Bjork has spent over a quarter-century at the epicenter of Californian desert rock. A founding member and composer in the heavily influential desert band Kyuss as well as propelling the seminal fuzz of Fu Manchu from 1994-2001. Over the last 30 years embarking on his solo career as a singer, guitarist, composer and bandleader, founding his own record labels (DUNA, LOW DESERT PUNK) and more, his history is a winding narrative of relentless, unflinching creativity.

Now Would Be A Good Time, (out July 25th) the debut album by Folk Bitch Trio, tells vivid, visceral stories. The songs are modern, youthful, singing acutely through dissociative daydreams and galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload, all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s. 

Heide Peverelle (they/them), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Gracie Sinclair (she/her) have known each other since high school, and first started singing together five years ago. Pilkington grew up with two musician parents and brings formative memories of watching them perform, of listening to Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams. Peverelle spends their spare time making art and furniture; those hobbies, as well as their love of pop music old and new, articulate a love for the tactile, the home-grown and the hand-made. Sinclair is the self-proclaimed jester of the group, but her taste skews dark, gothic, baroque and dramatic, expressed as a love of opera and ballet as well as musicians as wide-ranging as Patti Smith, Nirvana and Tchaikovsky.

Folk Bitch Trio have a shared sense of humour that is embedded deep in their music and that sets it alight, safe from the self-serious traps of the genre. Now Would Be A Good Time is funny and darkly ironic in the manner of writers like Mary Gaitskill or Otessa Moshfegh. Recording in Auckland with Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams) during the winter of 2024, the band built out these songs with minimalist, idiosyncratic arrangements. Recording to tape was the final missing thread in bringing the album to life.  Voices and guitar took centre stage, and the production voice the band struggled to articulate through digital recording was brought to fruition. Finally, they sounded like Folk Bitch Trio.   

The strongest link between the trio, aside from friendship, is music. “We all talked about loving music when we were growing up, and knowing we wanted music to be a big part of our lives,” says Pilkington. “But for me at least, when I looked into the future, it was this relatively mysterious thing.” Joining forces as a group demystified that future.  “When we started singing together,” they continue, “it immediately became the vehicle for my songs and my love of music, and we all had that in common.” That feeling—of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly—was justified: Folk Bitch Trio have already toured across Australia, Europe and the US, supporting bands as disparate as King Gizzard, Alex G and Julia Jacklin and signing with iconic indie label Jagjaguwar.

These are the stakes: Learning how to live a life free of lovesickness and loser exes, when to sink into contemporary nihilism and when to have a laugh with your friends, and why being alive can feel so ephemeral and unreal. In this sense, Now Would Be A Good Time feels like a manual for modern living: a missive from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together.

Following the announce of their highly anticipated fourth album, ‘Fairyland Codex,’ out June 20^th, 2025, Genre-bending Tropical Fuck Storm are taking their new music on the road, touring Aud in October and November 2025. The songs on ‘Fairyland Codex’ immerse us in the chaos of a fateful landslide, picking out the characters that litter the impending collapse of society. The live renditions can’t be missed.