Power-emo trio Camp Cope are saying one last goodbye, this time on vinyl.
The Melbourne-born band’s final show at the Sydney Opera House has been immortalised with a limited, one-time-only vinyl pressing, out today via longtime labels Poison City Records and Run For Cover Records.
The full performance, Camp Cope Live at Sydney Opera House, is also available digitally through Bandcamp only. And once the vinyl is gone, it’s gone.
The live album captures Georgia Maq, Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich, and Sarah “Thomo” Thompson, joined by unofficial fourth member Jennifer Aslett (San Cisco, Julia Jacklin), revisiting their celebrated catalogue spanning Camp Cope (2016), How To Socialise & Make Friends (2018), Running with the Hurricane (2022), and their 2017 split with Cayetana.
Special guests including Julia Jacklin, family, and friends joined the band onstage for what would be their swan song.
Among the highlights is the only recorded performance of the 10-minute version of “The Opener”.
Reflecting on the release, Georgia Maq, now based in Los Angeles, said, “This release is special because it’s a record of the very last time we were in a room together. Kelly and Thomo changed me and the three of us will always be Camp Cope.”
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Bassist Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich added there was a time the band were told they would ruin their careers for being too loud and too opinionated. “Then we sold out the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House, with a room full of people who’d probably been told they were too much of something,” she said. “Too loud, too weird, too soft, too angry, too emotional, too queer, too honest. I’m so grateful this album exists as a forever record of the night we all loudly filled one of the greatest rooms in the country with everything they had wanted to silence.”
Drummer and manager Sarah “Thomo” Thompson explained the band’s decision to release the album on vinyl and Bandcamp only, saying it felt like the most appropriate release method for the trio. “From our beginnings rehearsing with amps that we couldn’t hear, our first shows in warehouses and small Melbourne venues, through to touring the world and releasing albums, the one thing that has never changed has been our focus on staying independent,” she said. “Major streaming platforms such as Spotify have never and will never care about artists, and, no matter how they package themselves, will never care about music or art. Thanks for sticking it out with us as we did things our own way from start to end, this one is for you, not for the industry that tries its best to keep bands like ours from existing.”
Bonding in Melbourne over home-job tattoos, Camp Cope became a rallying force for change in Australian music. Their legacy is built on advocating for safer, more inclusive spaces and calling out the inequalities that still define much of the live music world.
Their breakout second album How to Socialise & Make Friends earned international acclaim — praised by NPR (“Every unpolished moment stuns with turn-of-age earnestness”), The New Yorker (“The words, as raw as the band’s nervy energy, spill out as though she’s been holding them in forever”), and The Guardian (“In 20 years, young women especially will approach her and thank Camp Cope for encouraging them to pick up a guitar and tell their own stories”).
Camp Cope ‘Live at the Sydney Opera House’ is available now.
