SuburbiaSuburbia – Australia has a long-standing tradition of producing notable rock bands that are as singular and dissimilar as the land in which they’re born—think AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Lobby Loyde and the Coloured Balls (for all you Melburnians out there)—bands whose sound incorporated the raw and unfiltered, and to a certain extent for some of them, utilised humour to help reinforce their skills and style.
A relatively new band on the block of this highly esteemed classic Australian rock genre is Suburbiasuburbia. The Suburbiasuburbia story began four years ago. A newly formed writing duo morphed into a five-piece band, with Toowoomba a band personnel resource. Incorporating themes that derive straight from the suburbs, ‘where the roofs are all the same’, the band delivers a despatch from the great unwashed, a message from the land and sometimes a little self-deprecation.
With several singles and an album, Landfill, released since 2020, the band’s new release Bruce Hwy Elbow is a decent addition to their output, a blues-rock hybrid set to an intriguing lyric. The Bruce Highway is one of the world’s most dangerous highways and known as the ‘Highway of Shame’, the region’s number one crash zone and Suburbiasuburbia has now immortalised it in song. As the band says about the new release, ‘The song is about a couple of environmental sadists who are injured by a tree lopping exercise and hit the highway, driving north in search of something new.
They reach a farm only to find a gas drill rigging operation gone mad and the farmer’s property drought-ridden and on fire. As the smoke rises, they meet the owners, who now have nothing. Did running away change anything?’ This distinctly Australian flavour to the band’s approach, which undoubtedly emanates from the lyric’s casual fluency, an effortlessness in the telling contrasts with the boisterous soundtrack, makes for an entertaining rock experience.