Music

Gloria Brancatisano / June 30, 2021

Open Season brings Marlon Williams, King Gizz, Julia Jacklin, more to Brisbane

The Tivoli and The Princess are declaring 'Open Season' on live music and entertainment in Brisbane

The rest of the year is ready to be filled with live music and entertainment in Brisbane thanks to the jam-packed program of events across Open Season 2021.

Returning to its inaugural home at The Tivoli, Brisbane’s newest home for live music and the arts, The Princess Theatre, is also joining the fun.

True to the brand of the iconic Tivoli, live music again remains at the heart of the Open Season program with a stunning mix of artists and musicians handpicked to perform across both venues. 

A stellar lineup of artists including King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Julia Jacklin, Regurgitator, Sunnyboys, Marlon Williams, and Amyl & The Sniffers are all involved.

They’ll perform alongside a diverse and spectacular array of full-scale arts productions that can be described as nothing less than genre-defying, cutting-edge theatrical works.

Our last Open Season program was an experiment of sorts. It was a direct and intentional action designed to positively counteract the industry-wide devastation brought by COVID-19 – to breathe life back into Brisbane’s live performing arts scene.

Dave Sleswick, venue co-owner

So what does this year’s Open Season have in store for us? Let’s dig in!

Amyl & The Sniffers

Punk animals Amyl and The Sniffers​ have risen from the sticky carpets of Melbourne’s underground music scene to storm the world stage. Renowned for their chaotic, ball-tearing live show, they mash through the hooks at breakneck pace while “human firework” Amy Taylor lights up the stage — an exhilarating ride that routinely leaves fans covered in blood, sweat and saliva.

Big Scary

Melbourne two-piece Big Scary​ began life strumming and drumming in a suburban living room. 15 years later, Tom Iansek and Jo Syme are recognised as one of Australian music’s most respected and restlessly innovative indie partnerships.

Together, the duo has earned several ARIA and J Award nominations, Hottest 100 entries, two ARIA Top 10 albums, and the prestigious Australian Music Prize. They’ve played countless sold out tours and festivals, as well as cultivated a dedicated following.

Following 2016’s Animal – their longest, most ambitious release – Daisy is the pair’s most raw, punctual and playful album yet.

Betty Grumble’s Enemies of Grooviness Eat Shit

Your lovingly local hysterical heretic and person of interest Betty Grumble is back with her new offering, Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t, a deep dive into grief, pleasure and justice.

Grumble continues her quest for world-saving and lovemaking via our ancestors of rock ‘n’ roll, poetry and protest in this all-singing, all-howling cabaret du Sex Clown. This is the show she performs instead of an assassination, where laughter is sharpened to a blade, and the body, a feeling tonic.

Bite Club

Welcome to the return ofBite Club– the arty dinner party – an immersive culinary cabaret theatre experience.Bite Clubfeatures Brisbane’s award-winning cult-cabaret mischief makers, circus stars and heart-stopping hooligansBriefs Factory International,as they join forces with much celebrated and sainted song birdSahara Beck. In an event sautéed in hedonistic haze, guests will be treated to a shotgun wedding and table settings of music, circus, drag, burlesque, theatre and comedy.

Boozy Bearded Bingo

Satisfy your thinly-veiled gambling addiction with this high-key low-stakes bingo spectacular hosted by Australia’s cheekiest cabaret mischief makers – Briefs Factory International.

These queens have assembled an action-packed extravaganza that’s a cross between your nan’s bingo hall, a drag do at your local gay bar, and a circus night under the biggest top in town. Illustrious drag queen host Shivannah thrills with countless costume changes and numerical-based puns sure to bring a smile to your intensely focused dial. Bingo bouts are intermissioned by her entourage of spritely spruikers including hula hoop extraordinaire ‘Captain Kidd’, Australian circus star and wild card Thomas Worrell, and the off-beat soundboard gags supplied by the enigmatic DJ Gia.

Bowerytopia

The Stitchery Collective and Shandy Party have decided to embark on a collective imagining of utopia. We’re coming together to bring you a space emancipated from the out-dated shackles of expectations and prejudice around our gender, sexuality and bodies. Imagine a space where, for one evening, cis-het norms are discarded and we step together into a glitteringly queer multiverse filled with love, acceptance and wild dancing.

Club Briefs

Cult cabaret hooligans and mischief-makers Briefs present a wild romp of disco dancing, circus, variety, and burlesque featuring a hand-picked selection of guests from across the world of queer cabaret. Expect a pumping soundtrack with your favourite dancefloor smashes and ridiculous performances from the Briefs boys plus a cavalcade of hand-selected guest cabaret and circus artists.

Collar

If Blade Runner 2049 had a club, COLLAR would be the house band. It’s industrial, it’s gothic, it’s electronic, and it’s live set toes the line between a grungy, dystopian rave and electrifying art installation. COLLAR is a way to give light to the things that shadow us, in order to be comfortable in our unrest.

HTRK

Making their Tivoli debut, post-punk outfit HTRK– AKA Melbourne duo Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang – have long been one of Australia’s most essential bands, praised for their brooding, sensual soundscapes by the likes of The New Yorker, The Fader, Pitchfork, The Guardian and The Wire. HTRK’s fifth album, commissioned by the City of Melbourne’s Flash Forward project, is set for release in August.

Jarryd James

Launching the recently refurbished Princess Theatre is platinum-selling, ARIA Award-winning Jarryd James, with his first Brisbane show since putting out his critically acclaimed new album PM. He has had more than 480 million streams, an ARIA top 5 album, two triple platinum-selling singles and has the 4th most Shazamed song in Australia over the last decade.

Co-produced by James, the album was recorded in studios in Los Angeles, Nicaragua, Brisbane, Auckland and New York with Jarryd playing all the instruments on the record.

Julia Jacklin

If her debut album Don’t Let The Kids Win established Julia Jacklin​ as an artist to watch, her 2019 follow up Crushing solidified Jacklin as one of the greatest songwriters of her generation. It frequented end of year lists, was nominated forsix ARIA Awards, and both US and UK independent music awards, and led to sold out shows the world over. Now she is back on tour for a series of rare solo performances, in which she’ll draw on songs from across her entire catalogue and give fans some never before heard songs. 

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Melbourne’s electrifying, eccentric, eclectic and prolific music, film and art collective King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard settle into The Princess for a career spanning residency over five nights.

The band will show a different side of their musical personality each night, offering wildly different experiences.
1.Tuesday 21 September 2021 = Acoustic
2.Wednesday 22 September 2021 = Jams
3.Thursday 23 September 2021 = Microtonal
4.Friday 24 September 2021 = Garage Rock
5.Saturday 25 September 2021 = Heavy Meta’

Marlon Williams

New Zealand’s Marlon Williams possesses one of the greatest voices of his generation. His effortlessly distinctive tone and heartstring-plucking vibrato have garnered widespread love around the world.

Williams draws on folk and country traditions – often compared to Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison and Elvis – but what makes Williams so special is his unique ability to traverse genres on both his award-winning records, and in his famously captivating live shows. 

An Evening With… is Williams first solo tour in six years, and captures his most loved songs, new material, and both original and traditional the reo Māori Waiata. 

Nine Lives Festival

A one-day, three-stage event to take place indoors and outdoors at the iconic Tivoli, Nine Lives promises to be a very Brissy block party for lovers of tunes, friends and community.
The music will take place across three stages. Indoors will be the gorgeous main theatre inside the Tivoli as well as the What’s Golden room where live music will take place.
Outdoors will be tunes playing all day with DJs in the carpark as well as a bazaar of food-trucks, sausage sizzles, record crates, market stalls and activities for one and all.

The stellar lineup includes the likes of Big Scary, Stella Donnelly, Mildlife, Bananagun, Cool Sounds, and more.

Oracle

From the creative team behind the award winning MATADOR​ & the critically acclaimed MANSION​, comes their latest fusion of circus, burlesque, dance & contemporary storytelling; ORACLE​… and it is one for the gods!  

Since the beginning of time, humankind, gods and goddesses alike, have all looked up to the stars in an attempt to draw meaning from the universe. In doing so prophecies, myths and tales have been told; tales of monsters, mermaids and other mythical creatures, of powerful goddesses, and vengeful gods, of heroes and beautiful maidens. Tales of a decadent time, of love and lust, of bravery and sacrifice. Tales and legends that birthed the star constellations of the Zodiac signs we know today.  

With a diverse and talented cast of 19 performers, elite specialty acts and choreography, an epic soundtrack of classic anthems, hit songs, ballads, covers and cinematic masterpieces, as well as high fashion, handmade costumes paying homage to some of the biggest names of the fashion world, the team at Bass Fam Creative have crafted yet another feast for the senses.

Regurgitator

Can you believe it’s been 25 years since Brisbane rockers Regurgitator burst on to the scene with their debut album Tu-Plang.

The Sydney Morning Herald described it as, “an album that leapt from rock to rap, from fun to funk, from thrash to surf rock, and it did nothing less than announce the arrival of the most significant band in Australia today…” and it even went in to score a couple of ARIA Music Awards for Best Alternative Album and Breakthrough Album of the year.

And since then, the genre-bending band haven’t let off the pace for a second, the landmark debut one of many celebrated records in their catalogue.

Now Regurgitator are locked in for an exclusive Brisbane anniversary performance of that debut album – and from what we hear, the celebration is going to. be huge.

Sunnyboys

Got your dancing’ shoes ready? The hottest dance band in the land Sunnyboys welcome the return of spring with two Australian exclusives. Support comes from Brisbane nativesUps and Downscelebrating their 35th anniversary of their classic mini-albumSleepless, a seven track delight that featured the bands’s glorious take on Neil Diamond’sSolitary Manas well as their ownThe Living Kind.

Teeks

With a brand-new album in the mix, rising young Māori singer TEEKS is bringing his soulful sound to Australia this August.

From the moment you experience the soulful croon of Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi – professionally known as TEEKS – you’ll be hooked on his warm, vibrant voice. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter has already become a phenomenon in his homeland, going to #1 with his debut album this year.

The Alexander Ball

The Alexander Ball 2021 – hosted by Meanjin’s pioneering ballroom house, House of Alexander – brings the highly anticipated LGBTQIA+ event of the year that is a celebration of ballroom culture, a chronically under-appreciated but fundamental part of queer subcultures. 

A symbiosis of different artistic and cultural practices, The Alexander Ball creates a safe space and provides an opportunity for queer persons of colour to fully express themselves and showcase their talents on the runway through eight different categories. 

The Paper Kites

From their very first EP, 2011’s Woodland, The Paper Kites had found a devoted audience, and by early 2012 were headlining shows across Australia. Now, their recently released fifth album Roses, sees the band hitting the road once again. The first collaborative release from the band, the album features vocals from  Lucy Rose, Julia Stone, Nadia Reid, Ainslie Wills, Gena Rose Bruce, MARO and more.

The Murlocs

Beloved Australian rock band The Murlocs have just unleashed their new album Bittersweet Demons and now they are taking it on the road.

The album might just be the band’s most personal and boldly confident yet. Featuring 11 tracks written mostly on piano, the record is a collection of reflections on the people who have left the most profound imprint on the band’s lives – bringing a whole new spin to The Murlocs’ brand of radiant garage-rock.

Tropical F*** Storm 

Known for their brain melting, mind altering live shows, this tour will be TFS fans first opportunity to hear new songs from studio LP number three, Deep States live. Deep States mines familiar ground as well as new cultural terrains, while digging deeper into the subjective state of contemporary panic. 

Most of us have lived some inner Tropical Fuck Storm over this past year and a half, summed up perfectly with their first single of 2021 G.A.F.F.

Open Season will transform Brisbane from August to December 2021. Tickets are on sale via Ticketmaster.com.au.