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
JJ Speedball's Band Shandy Is In The Right Place At The Right Time
"All we've been doing is following bones people have thrown to us — sometimes you get an opportunity and if you can take it you grab it."
Features / Music
How Blur Kept The Magic Whip A Secret The Old-Fashioned Way
"The music industry is the worst industry to try and keep a secret in - everybody knows everybody else's business."
Features / Music
Thunder, Wind And Existentialism
"Sometimes there's bleak existentialism and sometimes there's optimistic existentialism — there is no point! Great!"
Features / Music
The Eternal Problem Is That The Music Industry Is Seen As Lowbrow
"The endless struggle that contemporary popular music faces is that on one hand it’s not treated as a legitimate art form by funding bodies..."
Features / Music
King Khan & BBQ Take A Stand On Uluru
"It’s a protest against the internet.”
Features / Music
The Grates
Patience, John And Daughter Soda Are The Dream Team
"I only remember the Splendours by the outfit I was wearing and not by the year. This will be our fifth Splendour: one year I had a green dress on."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Jud Campbell - Testing Times
"Acoustic-based country-infused folk-punk that drips pathos and rich imagery."
Features / Music
Jason Isbell Writes Songs To Sort Out His Baggage
"There are people who write for different reasons, but for me it's to sort out my own baggage and to unpack things."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Ducktails - St Catherine
"Lyrical themes of displacement mirror Mondanile's recent shift from NYC to LA."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Wavves & Cloud Nothings - No Life For Me
"This clearly isn’t meant to be a grand artistic statement, with songs kicking off and spluttering to an end almost at their leisure."
Features / Arts
Daniel Frederiksen Says Matilda The Musical Ain't Just For Kids
"The humour's really dark, and the stuff it's talking about is really risque at times."
Features / Music
Musical Schizophrenia, The Surveillance State And Pain Over Pleasure
"A bomb’s not going to drop on my head today and until it does I think it’s time to party."
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