Princess Chelsea, live at the Lansdowne 1 October 2026
Aotearoa ebbs and flows through Australia’s collective consciousness in forms not immediately detectable. Though the city of Sydney has a greater population than both islands combined, the Kiwis have found crafty ways to slip themselves into the cultural machinations of the Eastern Seaboard. I
Dumbhead, live at phoenix central park, 22 September 2026.
Lucy Horton and Calista Burrowes review It was hard not to revel in the air of self-concocted mystery on the rainy Tuesday night that experimental trip-hop three-piece Dumbhead (Naarm) graced Judith Neilson’s Phoenix Central Park. Chippendale creatives decked out in slim-fit leather and work-spons
Jane Dire: “My thing is coming back to storytelling and sort of asking what it means to be Australian.”
The project elucidates mistakes, restlessness, and indecision as all just parts of what makes us human. As we sat in Newtown’s Flour Drum, early autumnal light, languid and liquid through the window, fractured the identity of Jane Dire into a triptych. The first of the three spoke the most: Alec M
Don’t Call Them Twee Bro!
… But don’t call them Indie Sleaze or Hyperclash or Electroclash Revival or Indietronica or Bloghouse either … Jesse Carpenter has some words for the taxonomical sleazebags. At the concert you see a guy wearing a D&G shirt: standing for Deleuze and Guattari, or maybe Drain and Gang? Yo
Life during wartime: on massive attack at afterpay arena, August 9 2026.
Orpheus carefully yet assuredly steps toward his reflection in the mirror. He thinks not of his recently murdered wife, Eurydice, but of the princess of death with whom he has fallen in love. He makes contact with the mirror’s surface, which breaks and ripples. His body and reflection converge
mariners and woodsmen: salem, live at the sydney opera house 22/05/26
Feature Image: ‘snake eyes’ by John Holland. Ronan Linsley reviews … Emerging from the haunting pinelands comprising the state of Michigan is one of our generation’s most defining sounds. Equal parts melodic, harsh, and transcendent, SALEM have cemented themselves in the zeitgeis
The Kneecap Boys are Back in Town
calista burrowes reviews fenian What do you do when it seems like the whole world is against you? Do you retreat into obscurity? Do you just send it and live up to the villainy people assign to you? Kneecap does not have a fully grounded answer just yet, but FENIAN is their interim response to [&hel
Hellp! Dimes Square is Leaking
Jesse Carpenter reviews: the hellp, live at Astra Kulturhaus 12/03/26 As SURG’s Foreign Correspondent, a coveted position that I recently made up, I went to see The Hellp live at Astra Kulturhaus in Berlin for the strict purpose of ethnographic study of the greater Schaeffer library scene. My find
uh-oh. A twenty-something is yearning again.
I’m standing in the back of a ute screaming my lungs out over The Sydney Harbour Bridge and I’m convinced that I am, in fact, Emma Watson in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’; except I don’t have the head shape for a pixie cut, and this year’s Triple J champion ‘Never Be Like Y
The day I went and saw Japanese Breakfast at the Opera House on a whim and a prayer
Japanese Breakfast is a musical project I had definitely heard of before May 2025, but my knowledge did not extend beyond this fantastically textural name. It was only when a friend mentioned that they were heading to the Opera House to see the act, who were performing as part of Vivid, that I sat d