Bad//Dreems: Rip It Up and Start Again
Hometown heroes Bad//Dreems have spent more than a decade bringing their brand of avant-garde art tock to voracious audiences on an international scale. But with their new album HOO HA!, the group went back to basics to create their most assured record to date.
Words by Tyler Jenke // Image by Dougal Gorman
It’s been almost four years since Adelaide quartet Bad//Dreems released an album, and for a band whose music is characterised by the same urgency and frenetic energy that accompanies their live shows, that feels like an eternity.
Doomsday Ballet was launched in 2019, mere months before the advent of a global pandemic – so the time that has elapsed since is understandable. However, as vocalist Ben Marwe tells me over the phone from his Adelaide home, COVID left the band facing an uncertain future.
“The initial trajectory we were on – that was [taken] away from us,” Marwe recalls. “We were presented with a very real possibility that we wouldn’t get back on track, and that we may be at the end of things.
“What it did allow us to do was just kind of strip everything back to basics and re-evaluate what we were doing, why we were doing it, what it all meant to us.”
This decision to rip it up and start again allowed Bad//Dreems to harness the same sort of unbridled energy and vitality that earmarked their earliest days.
Rewind to September 23, 2011 and Bad//Dreems were another new group on the Adelaide music scene, gearing up to play their first show. Alex Cameron, the former guitarist of Melbourne’s Dardanelles, had recruited drummer Miles Wilson and bassist James Bartold of The Shiny Brights, along with newcomer Marwe for the new outfit.
Taking to the stage at Rocket Bar that Friday evening, the group kicked off a career that would still be going strong more than a decade later.
This was a young band who didn’t have any illusions about what the future would hold, aware they would have to work hard to make a name for themselves as they performed songs inspired by the relative isolation of their hometown.
“You don’t have to venture very far out from Adelaide to experience things that are somewhat strange, and it’s a great place to draw lyrical influence from,” Marwe explains.
“It was about embracing all of the weird shit that we saw rather than fucking off to Melbourne and ingratiating ourselves with a theme that wasn’t really a part of who we are.”
It was against the backdrop of Adelaide that the group crafted their debut EP, 2013’s Badlands, which thematically examined the state’s darker underbelly, adding an almost gothic element to their striking blend of pub-rock and post-punk. Debut album Dogs At Bay arrived in 2015, and Gutful followed two years later, with acclaimed producer Mark Opitz (INXS, AC/DC) sitting in for both records.
These albums were singularly Bad//Dreems: heavily South Australian in terms of lyrical and musical focus, yet vastly different to many of their contemporaries and influences. Their tracks discussed the likes of bikie gangs, and decried toxic masculinity and white nationalism.
“There’s lots of parts of Australian culture that are fascinating, but they’re so easily overlooked, and it’s very easy for us as a nation to be reductionist and to go back to footy, pies, beer and Crocodile Dundee.”
Guitarist Alex Cameron tells this me over the phone, our conversation delayed a day due to commitments in his day-job as a plastic surgeon. “All the Australian art that I like has always sought to go underneath that, to the darker aspects.”
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Despite the darkness that looms in a lyrical sense, or informs some of the group’s earlier post-punk sensibilities, Cameron agrees the Adelaide music scene is one that lends itself to a unique sense of creativity.
“It’s the same in any musical milieu; Berlin has a specific sound, bands from New York have a sound,” he explains.
“I think there’s always something in an environment that does seep into people’s music. I hear bands like Twine, Placement, or Wireheads, and it’s all very Adelaide to me – they take tropes from the canon of independent guitar music.
“But there’s something always a little bit off-kilter and a bit weird about it, which is how I think of Adelaide.”
In February 2022, the group were kind enough to welcome me into the studio during the recording of their new album with producer Dan Luscombe (The Blackeyed Susans, The Drones). Working out of Northcote’s Soundpark Recording Studio, the studio’s industrial aesthetic created a surprisingly relaxed atmosphere, and resulted in music that was equal parts incendiary and cathartic, yet considered and emotional.
“It’s a real turning point for us, and I feel like it’s finally the album that we kind of always wanted to make, but all of the ingredients were never quite right,” Ben Marwe explains. “We were sort of always 90% of the way there, but with the world stopping, it allowed us to reassess and get all those ingredients right. It finally felt like everything just clicked.”
Those ingredients came together to ultimately create two albums, with an “electronic-influenced” record likely to arrive later. But HOO HA! is Bad//Dreems at their best, channelling their provocative sound as they craft tracks such as the explosive, stream-of-consciousness ‘See You Tomorrow’, or the vital ‘Jack’, which speaks to White Australia’s erasure of Aboriginal history.
“I think it’s a more assured album,” states Alex Cameron. “I think it’s more cohesive and punchy, both musically and lyrically, because I know what ideas I’m channelling, and that’s searching for those threads of the lost highways, the forgotten suburbs, people, and stories.
“It’s also the triumphant stories of survival – and that’s anything from the everyday guy who’s battling with feeling alienated through to the stories of survival of Aboriginal people.”
HOO HA! arrives into the world on May 19th, with Bad//Dreems set to embark on a national tour – their first in months – which will see them play the Hindley Street Music Hall on June 23.
Notably, it’s a bittersweet affair. On one hand, it’s a full circle moment for the band, who are joined on the lineup by the likes of Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice and Children Collide, the latter of which took the group on their first national tour in 2012.
“I’ve known [Children Collide frontman] Johnny Mackay since 2005, and I grew up musically by watching them,” recalls Cameron. “We got the opportunity early on to support them when we were really unknown.
“It was a great opportunity, but we got paid $100 per show for a 25-date tour of Australia going to places like Bundaberg, Bunbury, and Toowoomba, and obviously it was very difficult to do that when the band had no money,” he adds. “We also had to load all of Children Collide’s backline for each show.”
The Children Collide link goes even deeper, with drummer Ryan Caesar taking over from Wilson for a handful of dates earlier in the year. However, the tour is also marked with a tinge of sadness given it’s their first without James Bartold, who announced his exit in December, citing a desire to spend more time with his growing family.
“It was different, those first few shows,” notes Marwe. “You get used to something for a decade and it becomes totally a part of you, and then it sort of shifts.
“It’s taken some getting used to, but we’re in a very positive headspace and James made a very difficult decision to do what was best for him. But we’re all still mates, and we’ve got a new guy called Deon [Slaviero] from Split System playing in the band – and he can play like a motherfucker!”
With everything falling into place, a new album, new shows, and a newfound sense of confidence, Bad//Dreems aren’t too different from their early days. They’re not focusing on fame and glory, rather, they’re all about the music.
“I don’t feel like we need to be limited by particular mores of the industry or particular scenes,” says Cameron. “I think the most important thing is that we make honest, authentic music that we care about deeply.”
See Bad//Dreems play at Hindley Street Music Hall this June 23. Tickets available now.
