Brisbane artist Jaguar Jonze, the alter-ego of Deena Lynch, is brave – both in the bold moves she makes as an artist, and as a woman navigating a tense socio-political climate. Despite her lengthy 2020 hospitalization due to COVID-19,...
Performer, vocalist and composer Gian Slater could have limited herself to purely working in the jazz world – but why would she, when she excels at pushing boundaries? After eight albums of original music, and numerous collaborative projects, she...
While the world awaited Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club, diminutive Australian singer Hayley Mary tantalised us with a cover version of its title track for Australian radio station Triple J’s Like A Version series. In a...
Every Saturday afternoon, driving home from teaching a Pilates class, I’d hit the freeway right as the theme song for Twang introduced Denise Hylands’ regular 2-hour country music show on 3RRR. I have to admit, I’ve never been a...
Renée Geyer is a soul superstar in Australia. She is vaunted by various scenes, from jazz to soul to rock and blues. She is regal and rockstar at once, with high cheekbones and a cheeky smile. At 67, she...
Emma Volard’s sound melds rhythm ‘n’ blues, neo-soul and electro in a contemporary, Australian ode to classic soul/hip hop artists like Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. Her 2020 single “Femininity” epitomises the brave, take-me-as-I-am-or-don’t attitude Volard espouses in both...
At the beginning of 2020, country singer Tracy McNeil had decided to finally stop dividing her life, giving up her day job as an educator and packing up her belongings to dedicate her life to touring her music. That new chapter...
A recent report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s youth radio station, Triple J, indicates that women are still underrepresented at almost every level of the music industry, including festival lineups, the boards of major music bodies, radio and at...
Rock ‘n’ roll’s first female roadie has lived with AC/DC, toured with Suzi Quatro, Leo Sayer and Status Quo, and though she couldn’t have imagined it as a teenager, she’s proven women belong backstage. Tana Douglas, a teenager whose...
Georgia Odette Sallybanks – better known simply as Odette – set a high benchmark with her debut album To a Stranger, which peaked at number 13 on the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Awards) Albums Chart and was nominated for...
Multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and intrepidly candid singer-songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick will release her seventh full length studio album, Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby, on Friday, February 5th, via Ba Da Bing Records/Rice is Nice. Known both for her...
This week for Playing Melbourne, we’re taking a detour up the East Coast of Australia to Queensland, where 3-piece band The Disgruntled Taxpayers are based in the capital city, Brisbane. We’re taking this long, humid and scenic trip because...
Raven Mahon doesn’t do predictable. The mixed-media designer is also a musician, currently half of The Green Child with Mikey Young (of Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Total Control). The duo started out as a long-distance collaboration, but Mahon...
Born and raised in Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs, Taylah Carroll recalls entertaining her family and friends with musical performances from an early age, often until her audience relented and sought escape. It was never Carroll who ended a performance. Now,...
January is not necessarily going to be the big refreshing escape from the year we’ve had, going by the news and the pandemic numbers. It won’t be the celebratory holidays we may have anticipated months ago. But what hasn’t...
In the 1930s, as the world sunk into an unprecedented economic depression, Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen’s song “Get Happy” prompted the American public to “forget your troubles,” “shout Hallelujah” and “chase all your cares away.” The simplicity of...
Twenty-five years ago, the Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, an epic double album packed with ferocious industrial-style rock like “Zero” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” but also with nostalgic, sentimental tracks, fuzzy with youthful romance,...
Noelani Petero is on a mission to bring back early the iconic 2000s R&B sound. The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter is unabashedly old-school in her approach to hip-hop and super-smooth R&B in the vein of Janet Jackson, Lauryn Hill and Aaliyah....
Elle Graham is a Melbourne transplant, having moved with her piano from Townsville, in regional Queensland, to the hub of Australian indie music. Best known as Woodes, she released her debut album Crystal Ball on November 13 – an...
Something For Kate is, like black coffee and rooftop beer gardens, fundamentally part of Melbourne. The trio – guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Paul Dempsey, drummer Clint Hyndman and bassist Stephanie Ashworth – have been performing and releasing albums since the mid-1990s. Their...
Katie Wighton, the Melbourne-based singer/songwriter best known for fronting All Our Exes Live in Texas, was feeling sentimental, so she started going through old videos on her phone – some from a decade ago, others from the “Zoom era”...
What is Australian music? Does it have a signature sound? Ask anyone from Arnhem Land to Arakoola, Melbourne to Mungo, and you’ll get a different response. What can’t be denied is that the original owners of Australian land had...
Zoe Randell and Steve Hassett of Luluc (pronounced “Loo-Luke”) have been riding the rollercoaster of pandemic feels, just like the rest of us. While it wasn’t in their plans to be back in Australia for the indeterminate future, the...
For those who have carved their career as artists, music journalists, publicists, label founders or roadies, there is no question of living, breathing – and working in – music. One woman who knows there is no other endeavour so...