The Temper TrapFor all intents and purposes, The Temper Trap have never officially split up. There was a period of some three years or so, however, that can effectively chalked up to time spent in the wild.
After touring to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of their multi-platinum 2009 debut album Conditions, they took some time away from each other – not just to pursue family life, but also to follow ideas and aspirations that lay outside of the band's immediate fold.
“Dougy [Mandagi, vocalist] had [solo project] Bloodmoon, Johnny [AKA Jonathon Aherne, bass] had his Shacks & Palaces project, and I was working on some film soundtracks as well as producing, recording and mixing other artists,” says Toby Dundas – the band's drummer and co-founder.
“Music was still in our lives, but we started to get itchy feet. We missed touring, and we missed each other. We began firing around demos, and soon enough we called each other up to get in the room.”
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So it came to be in 2022, some six years after the release of their third album Thick As Thieves, where the four band members – Mandagi, Aherne, Dundas and guitarist Joseph Greer – reconvened in a rehearsal space.
There was no agenda, yet had its own pressure riding on it as the band determined whether a comeback would properly be on the cards.
“I think all of us would say we weren't 100% sure that the spark would still be there,” says Dundas with a striking honesty. “We knew if we were going to do this again, there had to be that feeling; that we wanted to create more music together as The Temper Trap.
“Thankfully it was there from day one; within a few hours we had a new song called Kuru, which ended up being the last song on the record. That really set us on the path of knowing that we still had something to say, and that we still had that creative bond between the four of us to go on with it.”
The rest of what would become the band's fourth studio album Sungazer followed over the next couple of years, all while the band began returning to the stage – first as a support act for Kings Of Leon's 2022 arena tour, then for a series of festivals.
Last October, before the album was officially announced, the band did a trio of east-coast headliners that marked their first headlining tour in six years. There, they played several new Sungazer songs in amidst the classics – something that not only sat right with the band, but with the audiences as well.
“You can immediately see bits where a crowd engages with something they're hearing for the first time,” says Dundas. He laughs to himself: “Either that, or they start going off to the bar – and that's when you know you need to work on that bit of the song.
“When we wrote Conditions we were just a young band playing every weekend, and we really got to test all that stuff out as we were making it. That wasn't really the case for the second and third albums, and having done it this way again, that's definitely the right way for us to do it.”
At the time, the only song released from the album was the band's official comeback single Lucky Dimes – a dark, propulsive alt-rocker that offered some of the heaviest guitar passages and the most driving drums the band had ever committed to record.
Dundas happily takes credit for the latter, but also notes he didn't get there on his own. “If I have ideas for drum beats, I'll record them on my iPhone to remember for later,” he explains.
“I gave this phone recording to Styalz [Fuego, Sungazer's producer], who then ran it through a bunch of guitar pedals and turned this junk recording into an amazing beat that kind of almost had a hook within itself. That really set the tone for the attitude of the song.”
Dundas goes on to note that the creation of the song differed radically from how the band had done things in the past – in turn, further asserting the band's determination to not simply retread old ground after so many years away from new material.
“We were in a tiny little room, with a synth and maybe one guitar, and pretty much built the whole thing up on Styalz' laptop,” he says. It's always been jamming in the studio, or people bringing ideas in from home that then we'd flesh out in a band setting.
“I think the restricted nature of what we had available made us lean into those elements. It made us realise what we were capable of.”
Giving Up Air soon followed as Sungazer's second single, fresh from its live debut that October – although keen-eared fans of the band may have already been familiar with the song prior to the band releasing it.
Before it was a Temper Trap song, you see, it was a Bloodmoon song – with Mandagi originally putting out the highly-danceable cut back in 2022 as a solo artist prior, to the band reconvening.
Despite its sonic differences to his main band – indeed, that kind of being the point of a solo project – Dundas and co. wanted to see what it would sound like with all hands on deck. “The rest of the band really loved that song, but it was almost like it was unfinished,” he says.
“There was something else hiding in that original version that Dougy hadn't explored yet, so when we started jamming it I think we found that extra gear to it. The Bloodmoon version is quite restrained, in a really cool way, but the Temper Trap version puts the the foot to the floor and really takes it to a quite a euphoric place.
“We've always had electronic undercurrents in our music,” he adds, “through songs like Science Of Fear and Leaving Heartbreak Hotel and Trouble With Pain, and I think we were feeling more confident to bring that to the surface a little more on this album.”
It's clear from the way Dundas talks about the creation of Sungazer that he and his bandmates were thrilled at the idea of creating it. Simultaneously, however, he's the first to admit the creeping thoughts that inevitably came with carving out a new album after a decade away – would people have missed them? Would people even remember them, for that matter?
As if a sign from above, in July 2025 – just weeks before properly beginning the comeback trail – the band's signature song Sweet Disposition was voted in at number 11 in triple j's Hottest 100 Of Australian Songs – charting higher than any song by AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Silverchair, or Hunters & Collectors. It's a feat that, over a year after it happened, still has Dundas utterly incredulous.
“When we wrote that song, we had no idea what it would become,” he says. “I think we were just happy we had a fun track to play in the front bar of the Espy [AKA St. Kilda's Hotel Esplanade] that weekend. It didn't even make it into the Hottest 100 the year it came out.
It just kept being there in the background, with people discovering it in different ways – remixes, little TikTok viral moments, all sorts of random stuff like that. The way it's connected with people, now across generations... it's amazing playing shows where parents are bringing their kids who've grown up with that song and fallen in love with it too.
“It was an unbelievable honour to have made that list so high up, amongst such exalted company.”
The Temper Trap will release Sungazer in July, before joining Muse on tour through North America later that month. They return home for their own shows in September, and then? Who knows. All Dundas knows for absolute certain is that The Temper Trap are back, in the present tense, and are not planning on going anywhere.
The wilderness years are over, and they're going to ensure you don't forget about them. “I feel like, for all of us, this process has has started something anew,” he says.
“This record feels like the first thing in that new era, and so I hope that people will listen to the record excited by what they hear. I also hope it creates anticipation for what's next, because we definitely don't want to wait another 10 years. I think we would all say that we're in a really good creative moment, and that we want to grab the bull by the horns.
“With everything we're doing right now, there's just this excitement for what's possible in the future.”
The Temper Trap’s Sungazer releases on July 10th, with pre-orders available now. Tickets to their forthcoming Australian tour dates are on sale now.
Presented by MG Live and Frontier Touring
The Temper Trap – Australian Tour 2026
Friday, September 11th – Forum Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC (18+)
Saturday, September 12th – Night At The Parkland, Brisbane, QLD*
Wednesday, September 16th – Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide, SA (18+)
Friday, September 18th – Night At The Barracks, Sydney, NSW*
Friday, October 9th – ICF: Warehouse, Perth, WA (18+)*
*Not a MG Live/Frontier Touring show
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
