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

Carley Hall, Journalist

Carley Hall

Carley Hall is a Gold Coast-based writer who loves spinning a good yarn. She’s worked in print news rooms for more than a decade and now juggles young family life with a busy career in research communication, promoting all types of science from the dire and necessary to the weird and wonderful.

When she’s not doing all of the above, she’s dancing around her living room trying to brainwash her kids into liking her taste in music or getting out to see some gigs. Carley likes the heavy stuff most, but if it’s got hooky melodies, clever lyrics or off-kilter beats nothing is off limits.

Reviews / Live
Live Review: Soundwave Festival
"With almost three hours of Green Day you're gonna get a bunch of everything; old stuff, new stuff, stadium rock posturing and covers – plenty of covers. It all works well – though three hours is far too long."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: The Dead Daisies - The Dead Daisies
It’s a well-trodden path of guilty pleasure rock.
Reviews / Live
Live Review: Jeff Martin & Sarah McLeod, The Firetree
"As epically talented, enigmatic and humane as Martin is, that earlier dose of McLeod is what most will take home tonight."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Greenthief - Voyage
"It’s a safe journey but it’s a damn enjoyable one."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Ice Nine Kills - The Predator Becomes The Prey
"It’s been four years since their last long-player dropped and in that time it seems the lads have bumped the melodic dial up a notch"
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Skindred - Kill The Power
The opening title track is one of the best on offer, fusing trademark swagger from Webbe with crunchy metal chugs, settling into a more steadfast punk in Worlds On Fire and the ballad-like We Live.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Of Mice & Men - Restoring Force
These guys are tight. Nothing’s changed in that department for this Californian metalcore five-piece on their third album Restoring Force.
Reviews / Live
Live Review: Clowns, The Lost Cause, Bitter Lungs, Feeling Dave, Albion Gold
These dudes are young and tight as, and less chatty then their predecessors. It’s a sign of their assurance and it’s all there to be lapped up.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Filthy Boy - Smile That Won't Go Down
They’re fun but lack lengthy appeal.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Bandito Folk - The Embankment
The less is more thing follows into the groovy Hacky Sack and Into The Fire. Riveting stuff.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Radical Face - The Family Tree: The Branches
What Cooper instils into The Branches, the second instalment of The Family Tree trilogy, is touching, uplifting, sometimes bleak, but always mesmerising.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Mo Kenney - Mo Kenney
It's a rare and delightful treat when something aligns to grant a treasure such as Kenney.