Bleak Squad is a new Melbourne four-piece comprised of true Australian art-rock royalty, and Four Winds is the only South Coast stop on their first national tour. Featuring Adalita (Magic Dirt), Mick Harvey (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, The Birthday Party), Mick Turner (Dirty Three, Mess Esque) 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.
One summer’s day at the Fitzroy Pool, drummer and producer Marty Brown had a spark of inspiration. Sensing a shared instinct for making music that felt “simple and immediate,” he rang three fellow musicians—and Bleak Squad was born. What followed was a slow-burn creative ritual: the four artists slipping into rehearsal rooms whenever life allowed, trading riffs, half-formed songs and sonic experiments. Their sessions were loose, unhurried and full of discovery. “From the very first jam we gelled,” recalls Adalita, describing an atmosphere free of pressure and full of possibility. Before they knew it, those scattered sessions had coalesced into a full album—“suddenly we realised we’d become a band.” Most tracks of their first album, Strange Love, were laid down in just a couple of takes.
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 nine-song set of love, loss and lonesomeness, set to fizzing guitars, slippery basslines, and the signature illogical squawk of Turner’s guitar. With Strange Love, Bleak Squad announce the boldest of entries into the Australian music landscape.
Bleak Squad brings that raw, immediate energy to Four Winds —an unmissable chance to experience a band whose music was born from spontaneity, chemistry and pure creative instinct.
Strange Love is “a genuine collaboration” that “sounds more like a fourth album than a first.”
Strange Love is “a deliciously dark collection” – 9.2/10 stars
Artists
Adalita, vocals, guitar
Mick Harvey, vocals, multi-instrumentalist
Mick Turner, guitar
Marty Brown, drums
Tickets
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Meet the Artists
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Adalita
Adalita is a founding member of the rock bands Magic Dirt and Bleak Squad, as well as a solo artist. She released her first solo album, Adalita, in 2011 that won the Best Independent Album ARIA award and her second solo album, All Day Venus, in September 2013. Adalita was the first female musician to be on the cover for Australian Guitar magazine and was a support act for the Blondie and Pretenders double-headline 2010 Australian tour.
Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Harvey has won two ARIA music awards and has produced and contributed to multiple recordings by different artists, released nine albums as a solo artist and contributed to eight soundtracks. He has collaborated extensively with UK rock musician PJ Harvey (no relation) over several decades.
Mick Turner
Mick Turner is an Australian musician and artist. He is the guitarist for Dirty Three and was previously a member of the Sick Things, Fungus Brains, the Moodists , Tren Brothers, Mess Esque and Venom P. Stinger. He has released four solo studio albums, Tren Phantasma (1997), Marlan Rosa (1999), Moth (2003), and Don’t Tell the Driver (2013). He has been a supporting musician for many artists, including Cat Power, Will Oldham, Courtney Barnett, and Kurt Vile. His paintings have been exhibited around Australia and internationally.
Marty Brown
Marty Brown, is a Melbourne based drummer, manager, producer and engineer known for his work with various music groups, including Art Of Fighting and Clare Bowditch & The Feeding Set. He has recorded seven albums with wife Clare Bowdich at his Standalone Studios, and over a hundred others including Andew Morris, The Royal Jellies and Evening Cast. Brown inspired the founding of Bleak Squad, “I was sitting around Fitzroy pool one summer bemoaning I wasn’t playing drums enough. So I thought I might start a new project and just called everyone then and there. I can’t remember why I thought it would work. Maybe I recognised we all had a similar way of making music – uncomplicated and instantaneous.”