Melbourne music scene heavyweights join forces for noir rock project Bleak Squad

WHEN four of Australia’s most respected alternative musicians came together to make music, nobody knew quite what would happen.

For Adalita, best known as the frontwoman of Magic Dirt, the project “came out of the blue”.

“We got together in a studio and everyone, each person brought in a handful of ideas each, maybe three or four, either half-finished songs or whole songs or just a scrap of an idea,” she said.

“We’d show each other the idea and then we’d all start jamming to that.

“And it’s worked beautifully because there’s no ego in the band, we’re just serving the music and serving the songs and just bringing our own things to it.”

She said she was surprised by how easily the collaboration came together.

“Within five or 10 minutes of jamming together, we just felt like, ‘Oh, this is flowing and working’,” she said.

“You never know how these things are going to go – it’s sort of like a blind date really.”

That spontaneous session became Bleak Squad, a Melbourne four-piece featuring Adalita alongside Dirty Three and Mess Esque guitarist Mick Turner, former Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and The Birthday Party member Mick Harvey, and Art of Fighting’s Marty Brown.

The quartet will bring songs from their debut album Strange Love to Murwillumbah’s Regent Cinema on 1 August.

She said the band’s name reflects the balance between its collaborative spirit and its darker, moodier sound.

“I think squad is a great word because it implies sort of a gang, a kind of a club or something like that,” she said.

“And then bleak suits the music – it’s pretty dark and moody and noirish,” she said.

“There’s a bit of fun in the squad and then there’s darkness in the bleak.”

Bleak Squad draws from Melbourne’s long tradition of dark, art-driven music, with Adalita pointing to the city’s geography, culture and community as key forces behind its creative scene.

“It’s very villagey and it’s cold, people do stay indoors,” she said.

“There’s a lot of culture and arts here, a lot of thinkers, and there’s a lot of venues.

“I think there’s a lot of being indoors and being in dark spaces in clubs and pubs and shooting the breeze and talking music and playing music.”

Growing up in nearby Geelong, Adalita said she immersed herself in the city’s thriving community before moving to Melbourne with Magic Dirt.

She described Geelong’s iconic the Barwon Club Hotel as a “creche” for up-and-coming young bands, where a diverse mix of musicians came together in a thriving alternative music scene.

“There was a lot of punks. There was hardcore bands. There was skinheads. There was alternative grunge people. There was slightly kooky, like hippie bands,” she said.

“Everything you could ask for was in that one melting pot at the Barwon Club.”

Looking back, she said this scene was driven by creative motivation, with artists propelled by an art-first mentality.

“We weren’t just kids smoking joints or anything like that,” she said.

“We were making art, and we were serious about it.

“There was never any intention to create a career … the ambition was all about making a song and playing at the Barwon Club and playing to our friends and just expressing ourselves.”

“That was the sole reason I got into music.”

Decades later, Adalita said the reason she makes music remains unchanged.

“Without that central strength of the creative expression being pure and authentic, then nothing else matters,” she said.

“I think that’s pretty much the same formula for most artists, is you’re expressing yourself and you want to be unfettered when you’re making art.”

While her creative drive remains the same, she said the nature of her post-show kick-ons have changed.

“I still have such a great time doing what I do, but now I do it without the hangovers,” she said.

“They’re just too excruciating for me.”

These days, she said, winding down after a gig is more likely to involve board games than the bar.

“I kick on now after shows by doing things like, maybe I’ll play a game of dominoes,” she said.

“I’m still silly, which is a good thing, and I love not waking up with a hangover.”

Bleak Squad will perform at The Regent Cinema in Murwillumbah on 1 August from 7pm-11pm with tickets available through Humanitix.