Hard-rocking Aussie sisters at Brighton’s Chalk

Australian rock band Stonefield stop off at Brighton’s Chalk, Pool Valley, on March 17 as part of their European tour.
StonefieldStonefield
Stonefield

What a year it’s been for the Findlay sisters, storming The Great Escape back in May, releasing a stunning new album, going on and a sold-out tour with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.

From practicing in their family shed as teenagers in rural Australia, to touring the world with Fleetwood Mac, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, King Tuff, and King Gizzard, it’s been a strange trip for the four Findlay sisters.

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Written largely on the road in America earlier this year, the songs on BENT are filled with reference and reflection—the kind that comes from months spent far from home, living on four wheels.

The surreal isolation of trudging through white-out snow and snaking down deserted highways served as the perfect backdrop for the band to look inward, taking stock of the journey they’ve taken thus far as musicians, and as people.

“It’s a culmination of experiences, emotions, and stories collected over time,” explains lead singer and drummer Amy Findlay, “A growth of honest, raw, energy that has been burning within us and waiting for its moment.”

Recorded in just five days with Joe Walker and Stu Mackenzie from King Gizzard at their studio in Melbourne, the album is almost 100 per cent live.

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‘Sleep’ opens the album with guitars covered in five inches of sludge and distortion and something that sounds like a far-off siren, or the high-pitched howling of the wind.

It serves as a warning, a call to arms, kicking things off with a next-level version of the massive, unholy racket the band has become known for over the course of their last three albums.

The sonic inspiration taken from listening to Black Sabbath, Beak, Deep Purple, The Alan Parsons Project, and Mike Oldfield injects BENT with its sternum-shaking heaviness and ever-present swagger, but also its exploratory fearlessness — letting the songs loose to twist and turn, sticking to no one’s rules but their own.

Support at Chalk comes from Sleep Eaters and Sit Down.

Tickets are £10 in advance, from Seeticket or Resident Records, £12 on the door, 14+, under 16s to be accompanied by an adult.

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