Bad//DreemsWhen Adelaide's Bad//Dreems first formed back in 2011, it was a group that had come together with no particular plan.
By their own admission, guitarist and songwriter Alex Cameron and vocalist Ben Marwe met at their local football club in South Australia, while also crediting this connection to the band that Marwe's brother played in.
That band, The Shiny Brights, also included bassist James Bartold and drummer Miles Wilson, who would round out the initial line-up of Bad//Dreems.
"We had a simpatico with writing songs and music and we started doing things together," remembers Cameron. "It was just the joy of creativity.
"I think once we started playing with [James and Miles] then there was some idea of the type of music that would be suitable for us to be making."
Marwe confirms that their meeting had occurred closer to 2010, with the pair's joy of creativity quickly resulting in a flurry of emails being sent back and forth, containing home recordings crafted with software of questionable origins.
Those early recordings would serve as an auspicious origin to what would formally arrive in 2011. Emboldened with a batch of music to their name, Bad//Dreems would make their official live debut in September 2011, performing a headline show at Adelaide's Rocket Bar.
Reportedly, that show hadn't planned to be a headline gig, but after the top-billed act pulled out, Bad//Dreems instead played a far-too brief set comprising covers of Joy Division and Iggy Pop.
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It's a little hard to fathom that six years later, this same, ostensibly-shambolic band would be opening for Midnight Oil at Adelaide Oval, and at multiple shows in England two years later still.
However, when they properly entered the scene the following year (their bio has long listed 2012 as their official start date), they indeed found themselves with an audience interested in what they were doing.
"Initially it was playing to friends really, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for what we were doing," Cameron remembers. "So that helped us decide to take it a bit more seriously.
"At the time, I was probably frustrated that it didn't kick off overnight, because I thought it was good stuff, but in retrospect, we were very lucky to have attention from all manner of people – whether that be the industry or other bands."
In those early days, Bad//Dreems described themselves as "outsider rock", a term that is undoubtedly hard to articulate, but one that made sense for them.
Though their work was viewed as sonically-aligned with the pub rock genre that Adelaide was indeed famous for, Bad//Dreems indeed filtered their songwriting through that lens, albeit while showcasing compositions more aligned with post punk, lyrics that spoke of flawed characters, and a musical backdrop that often felt isolating.
Though these days an 'Australianised rock and roll sound' – that is, one which references local items, or features a prominent Australian accent – is rather commonplace in the modern musical landscape, Bad//Dreems were somewhat pioneers of the genre.
"I can remember when the first few reviews of our singles, from Beat in Melbourne, were absolutely scathing," Cameron remembers. "It actually used the term 'pub rock' as a put down, which it sort of was at that time.
"I can certainly remember in the 2000s, playing in my first band, being in Melbourne, and thinking stuff like Cold Chisel or even Midnight Oil was a bit on the nose; it was a bit macho, it was a bit anachronistic.
"So when we were labelled pub rock initially I felt like it was a slur, but it also coincided with not living in Melbourne any more, being outside of that bubble and re-examining a lot of that classic Australian music from the '70s and '80s, and realising that it actually had more depth than what I'd probably first appreciated."
This re-examination led to Bad//Dreems deciding instead to embrace this criticism, reclaiming the derisive criticism that may have come their way, and instead, lean into Australian culture while utilising lyrics that spoke to the darker nature of the Australian identity.
"We are not part of the music cognoscenti, we didn't have any lineage of being in really acclaimed bands or anything, so we just presented ourselves as we were," Cameron outlines.
"And I think that at the end of the day, authenticity in songwriting and in performance is what resonates with people."
As Marwe remembers, the penny dropped in regard to the group's future during a drive back from Melbourne after recording early track Tomorrow Mountain.
"We were listening to it on the way back, and then we wanted a bit of a palate cleanser," he remembers. "We'd slammed it about 15 times straight and we were excited about it, and I remember putting on Cold Chisel's Greatest Hits, and putting on My Baby.
"Alex and I were just kind of sitting in silence listening to it, and we're like, 'Fuck, I feel like this is what we should be doing.'"
Tracks like Tomorrow Mountain appeared on the band's 2013 EP, Badlands, which helped cement their place within the Australian music scene. Live performances followed, with the band playing an average of almost once per week in those early years.
Those live shows helped the band's profile rise, too. While their ferocious sound drew in older fans of the rock genre, so too did it resonate with the younger crowd thanks to exposure on triple j.
Meanwhile, Marwe's frenetic onstage presence was a sight to behold, with his almost performance art-style movements seeing him writhe around on stage as if he were in the throes of ecstasy or experiencing debilitating pain.
"It's definitely developed into a performance piece," he admits. "People might think that's fucking lame and it may be, but in the early stages, it definitely helped me get through the shyness factor.
"And yeah, it's fucking weird. But I like that; I like being weird," he adds. "I'm pretty normal when I'm not on stage, and that's the place where I can sort of relieve myself of whatever's happening inside my head."
Bad//Dreems would release their debut album, Dogs At Bay, in 2015. Recorded with pub rock veteran Mark Opitz, the album hit No. 33 on the charts and received modest critical acclaim. With the same team, the band repeated the feat for 2017's Gutful, which jumped another ten places up the charts.
2019's Doomsday Ballet followed, and after the morass of COVID, the group issued their fourth album, Hoo Ha!, in 2023. Just scraping into the ARIA top ten, it was undoubtedly their best-performing work, even resulting in an ARIA nomination for Best Rock Album.
Sadly, it also marked the last appearance of founding bassist Bartold, who left the group at the end of 2023. While the line-up had long been expanded to a quintet with the addition of guitarist Ali Wells, the five-piece formation remained with the inclusion of Split System's Deon Slaviero.
With Slaviero on deck, the band have now released their fifth album, Ultra Dundee. A stellar piece of work, it's a record which may in fact be the group's best release to date.
Harnessing that same sound the band cut their teeth on, Ultra Dundee also feels like a marked musical evolution for the band. Though saying it is 'mature' feels like too loaded of a word, it's a strong record which sees Marwe adopting the persona of the titular character, ultimately presenting itself as something of a concept album.
This common thread – which follows a character "shaped by distance, heat, work and self-inflicted consequences," Marwe notes, who is "living with awareness and the horror of seeing himself clearly and choosing to stay anyway" – is at times uncomfortable, but leans into the dark underbelly of Australian culture.
In effect, it's the culmination of what Bad//Dreems have always touched on in their work, albeit with a much sharper and clearer focus than ever.
While Cameron had lived in Victoria for a few years, the record was crafted following his move back to Adelaide, which lent itself to a far easier creative process. Recording demos at Wundenberg's Recording Studios in Thebarton, the musical process allowed the group to flesh out their sound more than ever.
Most interestingly though, while the creation of the record was a fruitful one for the band, the album itself seemed to have presented itself even before the first note was laid down.
"This album had the title before anything else," Cameron explains. "Ben came up with Ultra Dundee and then from that I went and wrote a track listing before the music was done.
"Names like St Francis Of Andamooka, Shadow Land, they were there. So there was an idea of the song, the titles, and lyrics before the music was written, which is not what we'd done before."
The record also sees the band listed as co-producers for the first time, with the increased control that they harnessed over the situation allowing them to craft a record far truer to their vision than ever before.
"Maybe since the third album onwards, we were probably in a place to produce ourselves," Cameron explains. "We always got a producer because it just makes it easier, because we work in a democratic manner, it makes it easier for someone to helm the ship.
"But it can be frustrating because you can lose control a little bit of what you're wanting to achieve. So that's always a delicate balance, and it can sometimes be frustrating when a producer comes in, you've spent 12 months thinking about an album and preparing, and the producer comes in, hears something fresh, has their ideas, and you don't end up maybe fulfilling the vision."
That vision in question is a very lofty one. At its core, Ultra Dundee is a Bad//Dreems record parading as a concept album, with a strong lyrical theme throughout. "Not that we ever set out or would ever set out to record a concept album, but this is probably as close as we'd ever get," Marwe asserts.
However, Cameron explains that between the release of Hoo Ha! and the creation of Ultra Dundee, time spent in therapy allowed him to manage the tension between the cerebral and creative sides of his brain. As a result, he attempted to let the rational side take a back seat so that the creative side could take over.
Though Cameron and Marwe initially had different ideas of what the title Ultra Dundee meant, discussions resulted in realising where they had to head musically, and the newfound cohesion resulting in the rational side once again taking over to complete the writing process.
"It didn't become a cohesive album until we realised that we weren't on the same page," Marwe notes, "But Ultra Dundee from my perspective, was the embodiment of all of the characters and lyrical themes over the journey and represented in the character who.
"And it can be as far-stretching as the dark characters in Snowtown to Mick Dundee, the braggadocio, the bravado of like the Aussie guy who plays into the pastiche himself. And that's represented in the song Ultra Dundee, if you watch the film clip, that's the guy.
"He has a sip of beer and he thinks that he is the life of the party walking through the mundane bar, but he's also concocting fucking medicine in his back shed as represented in St Francis Of Andamooka, and in another track he's on a meth trip.
"It's the figure I see in my head as he's standing on top of a mountain imbuing hate on all below him."
"I didn't think of Mick Dundee at all, but I thought of what probably would be more accurately termed as Ultra Kakadu," Cameron continues. "And it brought to mind a vista of the wide expenses of the Australian landscape, particularly the places around Arnhem and the centre of Australia, which we'd travelled to in 2023.
"It brought to mind a psychedelic version of that, like even though it already is quite vivid and colourful, but almost sort of that vista on mushrooms. That's kind of what I wanted to convey with being able to add space and texture to our sound, so that instead of being in the gritty and maybe sweaty, claustrophobic milieu of the pubs, it's taken out into that great Never Never of the middle of Australia, which is very symbolic of a lot of things.
"It was his idea of that character of an old man flying out of the colonised, suburban streets, the rural towns, and flying out into that beyond, and then gazing down and seeing all these different scenes," Cameron adds. "The scenes are where the characters that Ben inhabits are taking place.
"I think the Ultra Dundee lyric, that was probably that sort of where that came from. Just seeing the banker on dialysis, the last of Abe Saffron's dancing girls, and all these characters that we know are part of the Australian subconscious, but then as they fade into the great and timeless centre of the country and the national psyche."
Indeed, Ultra Dundee is an immensely powerful record, and one which is likely to be considered a crowning achievement of the band's discography.
However, while the group's history is peppered with massive achievements along the way (including performances alongside major names such as Midnight Oil, At The Drive-In, The Avalanches, Grinspoon, Cold Chisel, The Mark Of Cain, Robert Forster, and many more), they find it hard to hone in on specific moment on which they hang their collective hats
"We are by no means a household name, or have a very large profile, but when you go to a music space – for example, Nice Day To Go To The Club in Adelaide, Fitzy's [Ryan Fitzgerald] festival – you get people coming up from all sorts of places and walks of life wanting to talk about the music, it hits home that you've done something meaningful," Cameron explains.
"When I first started music, I would've given anything just to be able to play to people that I didn't know and have the effect that my favourite bands have had on me.
“The way that I went and watched Eddy Current Suppression Ring, With Hats, or Love Of Diagrams and the effect that had on me to compel me to spend a lifetime in music. To know that we might have had that effect on other people, that's the only thing that matters really."
"I'm proud that we've been able to really record and release five albums, and also seeing the development," Marwe echoes.
"I'm just going to speak for myself, but the development as an artist – being the wiggly, drunk, 20-year-old writhing around on stage at Rocket Bar at our first gig to being able to put on a festival at the Adelaide Uni and calling most of those bands our friends, really feeling ingratiated within a community, and feeling like we've done something good to add to that community.
"I'm most proud of the albums," he adds. "I talk to my wife's dad's friends and they just have absolutely no idea what it means to be a band at our level. They think it's either if you're not playing stadiums, you may as well be a cover band in the corner at the pub."
"There's so many times when we could have stopped," continues Cameron. "Because as much as we've had a lot of great opportunities, we've also never had an easy run. We've never had a manager for longer than a few years. We've not had a great amount of luck with working with record labels for more than a few years.
"Recently we had to basically have a court battle against a record label to get $20-$30,000 of royalties which were owed to us. We've had to do all that ourselves, and it's a tremendous burden – when you're not earning money – for a band to take on.
"At times it's felt like we've just had to fight tooth and nail just to get treated fairly and justly, and to keep the band going," Cameron. "And I think to be able to do that and keep it going for this amount of time and, and release five albums, I think that's a great testament to everyone."
Next month, the band will be launching their Ultra Dundee album tour, kicking off with their own Gather Sounds festival, which takes place over two days at Adelaide University across April 11th and 12th.
However, following the tour's completion in early May, the band will be hanging it up for a while, complementing the release of Ultra Dundee with news of an indefinite hiatus.
“It seems only yesterday that we started Bad//Dreems in Sharpies warehouse in an Adelaide heatwave,” Cameron shared in an Instagram post announcing the news. “We feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to do things beyond our wildest dreams.”
“In particular, we feel very privileged that people have taken an interest in what we do, turned up to shows and bought our records. For now, we’re putting the band on ice to percolate on all that we’ve achieved, and to give us all a chance to dedicate more time to our families, jobs and other projects.”
It's worth noting, of course, there's no bad blood leading to this decision, but rather, a considered choice to ensure that the members of Bad//Dreems are able to live their lives, to breathe, and to ensure that the grind of the industry doesn't leave them jaded and without an appetite to ever play again.
"I think it's a collective decision for the good of the music and the art to let it rest where it is," Cameron explains.
"For both Ben and I, the labour of even releasing something or doing a show is immense, and we're doing all that ourselves in amongst everyone's jobs and families. And it threatens to really overwhelm what's important, which is the music and the creation."
Of course, the word 'hiatus' also brings with it a sense of worry for fans. After all, some bands who announce such a news have never come back, leaving many fans to wonder what could have been, what went wrong, and everything else that goes with it.
So, while the future of Bad//Dreems may be unwritten as yet, what does the immediate future hold for its members?
"I'd like to explore doing some music that isn't related to the band, even if it never sees the light of day, having the time to explore creativity elsewhere," Marwe explains. "I feel like we've done everything we can up to this point to get the best out of the project.
"We'll still look at every show offer that comes through, or any opportunities that come through, and we'll make decisions as we see fit. Opportunities that present themselves to where we haven't had that experience before, absolutely, but as it stands, we're really cognisant of the fact that you don't want to flog a dead horse – not that the horse is dead; it's very much alive, we want to keep the horse alive.
"It just feels right," he adds. "It's like an AFL player choosing to retire at a certain point. Could they go around another year? Probably. But we want to leave a bit of gas in the tank."
"When we started playing in the bloody warehouse 15-odd years ago, the thought of going and supporting Midnight Oil in London would've been an amazing opportunity," Cameron explains. "The thought of playing to 500 people would've been an amazing opportunity. The thought of even getting on the radio, same thing.
"But we've done all of those things and we've done them often once or twice. But those things, I realised that that's not what I was doing this for. What I was doing it for was to make music and also make music with other people. And you can do that without any of that other stuff.
"A lot of it's actually about respecting music, and realising that you've got to a point where you're doing a lot of other stuff that actually isn't really about music, it's about a small business or the industry, and then you realise you're not even spending your time doing what you love."
At the end of the day, it's this desire to ensure the band is able to retain that love that is paramount to their decision to call time on things – at least for the time being.
"Personally, I find it quite frustrating that out of all the time I spend on music, probably 5% of the time is spent actually writing a song, which is the whole reason that I do this in the first place, and 95% is spent on accounting, meetings, dealing with industry stuff, and all of this," Cameron explains.
"Even playing live shows, even though they're enjoyable, takes up a lot of time that when you've only got limited time, you'd like to be doing something more creative," he adds. "So I guess that's part of it.
"It feels like this album is a good culmination of what we've done and what we're working towards."
Bad//Dreems' Ultra Dundee is out now, while tickets to their upcoming tour are on sale now.
Bad//Dreems Presents Ultra Dundee – Australian Tour 2025
With The Pretty Littles and Don't Thank Me Spank Me
Friday, April 10th – Saturday, April 11th – Gather Sounds, Adelaide, SA
Friday, April 18th – Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
Thursday, April 30th – Marrickville Bowlo, Sydney, NSW
Friday, May 1st – Marrickville Bowlo, Sydney, NSW (Sold Out)
Saturday, May 2nd – Brightside Outdoors, Brisbane, QLD
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
