Bleak Squad

Bleak Squad is a new Melbourne four-piece comprised of true Australian art-rock royalty. Featuring Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Mess Esque) Mick Harvey (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, The Birthday Party), Adalita (Magic Dirt) and Marty Brown (Art of Fighting), the unlikely quartet unite for the first time on Bleak Squad's brooding, noir-rock debut LP, Strange Love which has been shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize.

Borne from spur of the moment jam sessions, Strange Love sees all four members juggle multiple instruments, songwriting, their own idiosyncrasies, and lead vocal duties between Adalita and Harvey. The result is a confident nine-song set of love, loss and lonesome-ness, set to fizzing guitars, slippery basslines, and the signature illogical squawk of Turner’s guitar.

'They should not be missed live: four Australian music greats with charisma to burn, uncanny chemistry, and a quality set of songs tailor-made for those long, dark nights of the soul.' — Andrew Stafford, The Guardian

Support Act: Michael Beach
Beach is a masterful songwriter, he writes songs as seen from 10,000 feet, from 6 feet under, from every angle. The songs here aren’t stick-and-poke songs that will dry and fade on the skin, aimless prayers for jams; Beach has been making deliberate things for decades. His latest album, Big Black Plume is a record about connections, mercurially curated, transforming individual contributions into something strikingly communal.