Frenzal RhombFrenzal Rhomb’s iconic album Sans Souci turned 23 in April, and to celebrate the Aussie punk rock royals are touring it around the country and – maybe? – playing it in full.
What is the significance of 23 years you ask? Nothing. Frenzal just missed the 20th and the band states “the world may not make it until the 25th.” Fair enough. There’s just over a week before the tour starts when The Music speaks with vocalist Jay Whalley.
With such little time left an appropriate ice-breaker would be to ask how rehearsals are going for this momentous occasion.
“Um, when you say ‘while we’ve been rehearsing it…’ We have not rehearsed at all yet, but we were planning to do that on Friday,” Whalley confesses over the phone from his studio, the Pet Food Factory, in Sydney.
The brief that Frenzal have given themselves for these shows is to learn all the songs on the album and then start culling them one by one through the tour as they realise that they can’t play them anymore.
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“I'm counting on the rest of the band to know all the songs and I'm going to do my level best to remember all the lyrics,” he explains. “I think it should be good though… it'll be challenging but I'm sure we'll rise to the occasion in some fashion.
“Now I've got a 53-year-old voice, but I'm going to give it a red hot crack.”
When it comes to full album playthroughs, Whalley’s unsure that any band has a perfect album with all good songs. This even applies to bands that are regarded as the greatest of all time.
“Even your favourite albums, there’s something on there that you probably want to skip and why would we inflict that on our beautiful audience?
“I listened to The White Album [The Beatles, 1968] the other day from start to finish and there's a couple of real dollops. I mean it's fantastic. Some of those Ramones records, they’re fantastic, but there's a few songs where you’re like ‘you didn't have to necessarily do this one.’”
Sans Souci was recorded in LA and released in 2003. It came out after 2000’s Shut Your Mouth, which Whalley describes as “our worst record yet”.
At the time, Whalley believed the situation was so dire that the band were going to split up. However, the band had a burst of fresh energy with the addition of bassist Tom Crease.
“I think the mistake I made on [Shut Your Mouth] was that I was trying to write too many introspective lyrics,” he recalls. “We were sort of trying a bit hard. I just remembered that you just have to write dumb shit for this band.
“Then it became, ‘Yeah, I really love that record that we did.’ It was just sort of fun. It felt like a rebirth of the band and that we could sort of go on forever after that.”
Sans Souci was released 23 years ago and the songs on them were written by a younger version of the band who were at a different time in their life.
For example, 60, Beautiful & Mine – written about being with an older woman – has aged with them. “Now we're in our early 50s. Actually, we're talking about our peers really,” Whalley laughs.
There’s nothing on Sans Souci that Whalley can’t stand, but there has been some self-reflection on one of their songs.
“The Bucket Bong song I feel like has overtones of coercive control, which I didn’t necessarily think about at the time,” he muses. “But it’s pretty loose and it’s probably only my interpretation.”
There are also songs like White World and Who’d Be A Cop? that are still as politically relevant as ever and sound like they could have been written yesterday.
Who’d Be A Cop? brings back specific memories for Whalley who says it was written after nearly getting his arm broken by the police. Whalley was taking part in a protest at Darling Harbour during the height of the Tampa Affair where 433 rescued asylum-seekers were refused entry to Australia.
“We were at this protest where we were basically trying to ruin Philip Ruddock’s lunch at Darling Harbour, and we're sort of banging on these windows,” he remembers. “The cops came down and there was a little bit of argy-bargy with the cops and then this guy picked me out of the crowd.
“This cop sort of barged through the crowd and grabbed me by the shoulders and chucked me in the back of the paddy wagon. I was like, ‘Why'd you pick me?’ And he's like, ‘I love Frenzal. You guys are sick’, I was like ‘You're a fucking arsehole mate.’
“I remember him letting us out at the cop shop when we got back there and he's like ‘Just don't go back to Darling Harbour. I'm gonna let you guys go. I'll see you at the next show… Can I have an autograph?’ I'm like, ‘Fuck off dude.’
“Then he actually cropped up later on,” Whalley continues. “I think it was a show in the Gold Coast and someone came backstage and said ‘There's this guy here that said he arrested you in 2003. He wants to come backstage and say g’day’. I was like, ‘Fucking tell him to fuck off.’”
The second song on San Souci is titled Russell Crowe’s Band and is a non-complimentary one-minute song poking fun at Crowe’s musical endeavours.
Frenzal recently joked in their tour announcement media release that “we’ve been advised by our lawyers not to talk about [that song],” but it sounds like an olive branch has recently been extended.
“Humorously, this last week we got asked by a film production company who are making a documentary about Russell Crowe – I'm not sure if I'm really supposed to be talking about this – wanting to use the song ‘Russell Crowe's band’s a fuckin’ pile of shit’ in a film about him and his life seen through his love of music.
“I thought, ‘Oh well, you know, maybe now Russell and I – he's finally come on board, he's finally a Frenzal fan – we can truly be friends after all this time.’ But then he low-balled us on the offer. So we said no.”
Around the time Sans Souci came out was also when Whalley participated in one of the greatest feuds in Australian radio history, the infamous phone call with Kyle Sandilands & Jackie O. Despite happening over 20 years ago, Whalley’s comments about Australian music not being supported enough still ring true today.
Australian musicians now have the dystopian problem of having to compete with AI music. Josh Fawaz’s rework of Madonna’s Like A Prayer previously became the most played song on Australian radio last week and entered the ARIA charts.
“That phone call should really have changed the course of the whole music industry, but it didn’t,” Whalley laments for a second, before joking, “that's probably a testament to my lack of influence."
“I don't know. I mean things sort of stay the same in that department and I guess what [Kyle] and people like him don't really have an understanding of is that there's this whole other universe of music that exists outside their world that's thriving. Obviously, there's these obstacles all the time.
“I mean does your band really want to get played on KIIS FM? It sounds stressful. It seems like a really stressful world, whereas, when you're doing stuff of your own accord and off on your own bat then you sort of have much more control over everything.
“Even if you're not selling out stadiums or whatever, you can have this life where you can enjoy it and you can enjoy the music and every day is not like another set of stresses.”
Tickets to Frenzal Rhomb’s 23rd anniversary tour of Sans Souci are on sale now.
FRENZAL RHOMB
2026 SANS SOUCI 23RD ANNIVERSARY TOUR
Thursday, August 13th – The Gov, Tartanya/Adelaide, SA
Friday, August 14th – Baso, Ngunnawal/Canberra, ACT
Saturday, August 15th – The Station, Ngarigo/Jindabyne, NSW
Friday, September 11th – Barwon Heads Hotel, Wadawurrung/Barwon Heads, VIC
Saturday, September 12th – The Croxton, Naarm/Melbourne, VIC
Thursday, September 17th – Leichhardt Hotel, Darumbal/Rockhampton, QLD
Friday, September 18th – McGuires Hotel, Yuwibara/Mackay, QLD
Saturday, September 19th – The Warehouse, Gurambilbarra/Townsville, QLD
Sunday, September 20th – The Jack, Gimuy/Cairns, QLD
Wednesday, October 21st Rosemount Hotel, Boorloo/Perth, WA
Thursday, October 22nd Prince of Wales, Goomburrup/Bunbury, WA
Friday, October 23rd The River, Wooditjup/Margaret River, WA
Saturday, October 24th – Carine Tavern, Whadjuk/Duncraig, WA
Friday, November 6th – Metro, Gadigal/Sydney, NSW
Saturday, November 7th – Hamilton Station, Mulubinba/Newcastle, NSW
Thursday, November 12th – The Northern, Cavanbah/Byron Bay, NSW
Friday, November 13th – Princess Theatre, Turrbal/Woolloongabba, QLD
Saturday, November 14th – Kings Beach Tavern, Gubbi Gubbi/Caloundra, QLD
Thursday, November 19th – Altar, Nipaluna/Hobart, TAS
Friday, November 20th – Forth Pub, Wuwinilili/Forth, TAS
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
