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 / Album
Album Review: Arcane Saints - Turning The Tide
There’s a number of tracks here that fail to leave any impression, whether through lacklustre hooks or repetitive patterns, which leaves the whole album in danger of being relegated to occasional spins.
Features / Music
A Man Is An Island
"I had written those songs [for Firestarter] purposefully and not doing my usual thing of fleshing out tracks, because I was pretty keen to experiment with someone else."
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Pluto Jonze - Eject
While there’s nostalgia galore, making you feel as if you’ve always known these songs, it’s above all an entry into the strange, new world of Pluto Jonze and you’d be a fool to ignore it.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Dan Parsons - Dan Parsons
Parsons’ second offering is a quiet, intimate experience and its rich sparseness demands attention. You won’t be left wanting, but you’ll be aching for more from the man himself.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Airbourne - Black Dog Barking
This is straight-up ballsy, boozing, womanising pub rock and their third album, Black Dog Barking, delivers these goods and, sadly, that’s about it
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Karnivool - Asymmetry
Where Sound Awake’s hits connected instantly, Asymmetry’s slow-burning, raw, complex structures and sparse instrumentation requires an open mind and repeated listening
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Vaudeville Smash - Dancing For The Girl
Vaudeville Smash’s debut accomplishes the sometimes unattainable; not one track goes by unnoticed, and that’s a feat to be commended.
Reviews / Live
Live Review: Fear Factory, Twelve Foot Ninja
The halcyon days of industrial metal live on.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
A lot of tracks on offer are plump for the picking, while others are a bit underripe.
Features / Music
Sweet Sounds
"We spend much more time on developing songs before we play live, whereas in the past we’d come up with an idea and we’d play it live and just work it out as we played."
Reviews / Live
Live Review: River Sessions 2013
In terms of the line-up River Sessions 2013 can’t be faulted. In every other sense, it can.
Reviews / Album
Album Review: 30 Second To Mars - Love Lust Faith + Dreams
LLF+D is sadly paper-thin, lyrically and sonically, and with nothing solid to anchor it down into the subconscious, it’s 45 minutes better spent elsewhere.
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