It’s been twenty years since Screamfeeder last performed in New Zealand.
The Brisbane indie-rock band, who released consistently throughout the ’90s and ’00s, are coming back to Aotearoa for four highly anticipated shows this week.
Screamfeeder – comprised of Tim Steward, Kellie Lloyd, Darek Mudge, and Phil Usher – are playing in Dunedin, Lyttelton, Wellington, and Auckland, joined by some fine local support acts including Swallow the Rat and Dateline.
“Now that we’ve had the four massive shows with Hoodoo Gurus, we excitedly turn our attention to NZ. What to expect? A setlist that spans the band’s entire career, pretty much all the singles plus some deep album cuts,” the band said.
“We have listened to dozens of Kiwi bands and carefully picked some of our absolute favourites to join us for these shows!” they continued.
Screamfeeder’s most recent album, Five Rooms, was given widespread praise in 2022. The band took Rolling Stone AU/NZ through the album track-by-track at the time.
“Five Rooms is a thunderous and evocative album… This is a band at their very best, showing creativity has no use by date,” Backseat Mafia wrote in a positive review.
Screamfeeder’s huge part in the “cultural explosion that changed Brisbane forever” was told in director Jacob Schoitz’s 2024 documentary The Ending Goes Forever.
Ahead of their New Zealand tour, Screamfeeder’s Steward and Lloyd shared their favourite Kiwi acts. You can also check out their New Zealand tour dates here.
Tim Steward’s Favourites
Bailter Space
I don’t know their whole catalogue but when we programmed RAGE, our drummer Dean added “SPLAT”. This song was so beautiful, memorable, cool, hypnotic, and damn classy, I wondered how these guys aren’t kings of the world and hugely revered outside of Christchurch. After exploring a little, I found out they kinda are/were. In 1995 the world was falling in love with the colliding worlds of noise and melody, yet again, as indie-rock splintered and multiplied in endless new ways. It was easy to do it badly, and deceptively hard to do it well. Bailter Space made amateurs of us all.
Rogernomix
It’s always the same looking at any era: the big bands get remembered and you forget there’s a whole world of smaller bands, equally good, working away, that no one gets to hear. Not sure if this is the case for Wellington punks Rogernomix, but it’s so refreshing to hear such an accomplished young band, dedicating themselves so bloody single-mindedly to the aesthetics of UK-82/D-Beat punk and playing it with such ferocity. Every song sears your brain that little bit more.
The Beths
At the end of the day the only thing left is melody. If it’s coupled with a sweet voice and comes packaged with honesty in the playing and the lyrical delivery, even better. If the band photos are dorky, and if it’s obviously non-pretentious and it’s popular just because it’s good… tick, tick, tick – thank you, The Beths!
Kellie Lloyd’s Favourites
Fazerdaze
In Brisbane we have a radio station called 4zzz and I co-host a show where we play lots of new and old music. One of the bands I’ve discovered on the show (besides Look Blue Go Purple – my co-host’s FAVOURITE band ever) is Fazerdaze. I love her voice and her melodies. 4zzz has The New Zealand Show and I first heard her there and we have played her a few times on our show Heyday.
Straightjacket Fits
Straitjacket Fits are another of those classic Dunedin bands that we grew up hearing on the radio and seeing music videos on RAGE, and of course “Down in Splendour” is one the most majestic songs ever released. I ‘remember’ seeing them at the Big Day Out a million years ago. I love their dreamy sound and it still holds up today. Flying Nun Records’ legacy cannot be overstated, in terms of its influence on most of the music Screamfeeder has listened to and been inspired by for our whole existence.
