Fresh Finds: Class Of 2025 – Aussie Acts To Add To Your Playlist

Steve Bell, Journalist

Steve Bell

Many, many moons ago Steve Bell was unassumingly writing a small fanzine for the inner-city Brisbane record store where he worked when on one otherwise normal day he was poached into the cutthroat world of street press, embarking on an eye-opening journey interviewing bands and banging on about music for the street press publication Time Off. It's an association that's now existed for well over 20 years - including a decade full-time as the print editor for Time Off/The Music - and one which still provides him with immense enjoyment and satisfaction, even though in recent times it's nestled alongside other music-related vocations such as co-owning a record store and indie label, radio broadcasting and navigating the podcast world.

Features / Music
'We're Just Pretty Honest And Don't Try And Bullshit Anyone'
"We have to try and have the same life experience, and I guess try to grow up the same way, but you're always stuck in a hotel in Bumfuck, Texas or something."
Reviews / Live
Live Review: Cloud Nothings, Bugs, Electric Zebra
"At their best Cloud Nothings are nothing if not anthemic, the melodic melancholy of recent single 'Modern Act' inciting another burst of excitement in the crowd."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy
"Like all of Toledo's best work highbrow, almost existential sentiments abound..."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Shannon & The Clams - Onion
"...you'll unveil divergent varieties of old school charm as you peel back the layers of 'Onion'."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Marlon Williams - Make Way For Love
"... The lovelorn misery inherent in these paeans to heartbreak doesn't overshadow the unabashed beauty..."
Features / Music
In Times Of Unrest & Distress We Could All Use A Navigator
"There's so much talk about immigration and deportation, there's so many people that are saying, 'Where are all of my people going to go?'"
Features / Music
Beyond Art & Commerce, Where Things Are Just 'Stupidly Perfect' & Nothing Is Precious
"I think almost every great artist has at least one record... that just kind of amplified and crystallised what they were doing on another level."
Features / Music
Home Is Where The Art Is
"Any musician or artist of any type is really just a filter for the cultural products around them - they suck them all in and then spit them out as a new thing."
Features / Music
Why Putting Out A Record Pre-Trump 'Just Wasn't Going To Cut It'
"We're not creating a safe space, but we're creating a dangerous place where ideas of injustice can't breathe and where hate doesn't get any oxygen - let's create a place where that shit isn't welcome."
Features / Music
If You're A Black Mile From The Surface It's Time To Trust Your Instincts
"The whole time we were aware that it was definitely going to make a better memory than an experience."
Reviews / Live
Live Review: Sunnyboys, The Celibate Rifles
"What was meant as a one-off return six years ago continues as an unstoppable juggernaut: long may Jeremy and his regal cohorts reign."
Features / Music
Returning To '16 Lovers Lane' Thirty-one Years Later
"But in the case of '16 Lovers Lane' it meant that it lent the songs quite a classic, timeless sound that transcends their era and makes them relevant to any era."
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