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Drawing on their myriad strengths and influences for album number four, Bad//Dreems have emerged from the morass of these past few years to deliver one of their most immediate, vital, and confident records to date.
Releasing Doomsday Ballet in late 2019, the Adelaide rock outfit – comprising vocalist/guitarist Ben Marwe, guitarists Alex Cameron and Ali Wells and drummer Miles Wilson – went head-first into 2020 with plans for recording new music and international touring. With momentum swiftly halted by a global pandemic, the group took careful steps toward their next stage, with the lockdown music scene garnering some new material, while Marwe also launched his Wedding Motel solo project.
Inspired again to write music by the return of the live music scene, the group penned a number of tracks which pushed their own boundaries in terms of their respective themes and composition, but still managed to fit within the trademark sound that the Bad//Dreems name evoked.
In 2021, the group made a batch of demos at Wundenberg’s Recording Studios in Adelaide, before setting up camp at Melbourne’s Soundpark Studios in early 2022 with Dan Luscombe (The Drones, The Blackeyed Susans) on production, and Andrew ‘Idge’ Hehir in the engineer’s chair to craft their fourth record, Hoo Ha!.
Working with Luscombe, the group were granted the freedom and creative licence to capture a record which harnessed the energy and post-punk inspired pub-rock that their acclaimed live shows deliver, and paired it with literate, visceral lyrics that are equal parts character studies and modern commentary on the darker underbelly of Australia.
Giving fans a taste of their new era in mid-2022 by way of ‘Mansfield 6.0’, which touched on anti-lockdown protests and the 2021 Victorian earthquake, before following things up with ‘Jack’, a passionate track which spoke to Australia’s deliberate erasure of Indigenous history and identity. “If the truth is going to be told, then white Australia will have to listen,” Cameron said upon its release.
Having spent 2022 embarking upon widespread touring, including a trek throughout the Northern Territory with Black Rock Band for Guts touring, Bad//Dreems have entered their new era with a newfound sense of confidence; the confidence to express what they want, to sound how they want, and to speak up about what matters to them. Launching their Hoo Ha! podcast in the last months of the year, it has thus far centred on the stories of a number of First Nations figures, shining a light on the country’s untold stories.
More than ten years into their career, Adelaide’s Bad//Dreems are now set to enter their newest era with the sort of confidence and energy that most bands never manage to attain. Passionate, powerful, and pertinent, Hoo Ha! Is a sign of what’s to come for the group, and an indication that things will never lessen in intensity. “We’re in this for the long haul, and we don’t ever want to start going through the motions,” Cameron notes. “Nor do we ever want to stop.”
