BLEAK SQUAD - Live In Tassie!
Altar Bar - Hobart, TAS
Thursday 13th August 2026
Photos by: Pete Mellows
Written by: Annette Geneva
A packed-out Altar Bar on a school night. I went in knowing exactly why I was there: four people who have spent decades making some of the most interesting, strange and important music in this country, somehow ending up on the same stage. Adalita, Mick Harvey, Mick Turner and Marty Brown originally got together for a jam without any grand plan to become a band. Somehow, almost accidentally, they found something that worked. Strange Love sounds dark, moody and cinematic because that is exactly what they were chasing, but seeing BLEAK SQUAD live makes the whole thing feel much more real. And in a packed-out Altar Bar, it felt pretty intense.
Before the main attraction, EWAH & THE VISION OF PARADISE were an excellent discovery for me. I’ve somehow managed to miss them despite their long history in the Hobart scene, and I am very glad that changed. Their cinematic, psychedelic post-punk sound has that particular Tasmanian quality of beauty with something slightly rotten underneath it. EWAH’s guitar was saturated and prickly, the synths gave everything a strange glow and the whole band built these enormous, brooding shapes around her. That combination of post-punk and new wave is very much my thing.
The last two songs absolutely rocked. Properly. I left wanting to know much more about this band. I also really wanted to talk to EWAH afterwards, partly because I wanted to tell her I’d just discovered her and partly because I need to know what the hell she was running through that pedalboard. I got distracted by the next event and had to make a run for it, so this is officially my unfinished business.
Pictured: A pedalboard and a pedicure
Then came BLEAK SQUAD. It is a ridiculous amount of Australian musical history standing in one small room, but what struck me most was that it never felt like a nostalgia exercise.
The set moved through the murky, slow-burning world of Strange Love: Strange Love, Safe as Houses, Everything Must Change, Blue Signs, Let Go of Love, World Go to Hell, Ghost of the Bad Humour Man, Lost My Head and Melanie alongside Mick Harvey’s solo songs and the later material. The setlist itself looked like a little map of beautiful misery.
And Everything Must Change – I absolutely love this song, particularly with Mick Harvey on vocals. There is something about his voice inside BLEAK SQUAD’s sound that makes the song feel older than it is, as though it has been sitting in some dark Australian room waiting for these four people to find it. The song was released as part of Strange Love, but hearing it live gave it considerably more weight.
Then there was Cover Me with Roses(Jackson C. Frank cover) from Mick Harvey’s Golden Mirror. Hearing that folded into a BLEAK SQUAD set was one of those moments where the connections between all these musicians suddenly become visible. Amanda Acevedo, who appears on the original recording, was actually there last night helping with merch, and she was absolutely lovely. It was also genuinely wonderful watching the band stay around afterwards, meet people, sign records and merch and actually spend time with the audience. For a band carrying this much musical history, there was no sense of being untouchable.
It would be criminal to not mention how unbelievably cool Adalita is. She has that thing where she can stand completely still and somehow command the entire room. There is no need for theatrics because the presence is already there. Watching her with a guitar again, knowing the history of MAGIC DIRT and everything she has contributed to Australian rock, was a pretty special thing. She remains a force.
Mick Turner brought to the strange, beautiful guitar language you would expect, Marty Brown held the whole thing together with that deceptively understated rhythmic intelligence, and Harvey moved between guitars and vocals like someone who has been doing this forever because, well, he has. The result is less “supergroup” than four very distinct musical personalities discovering that they fit together remarkably well. Even the people who have previously described the group as “supernatural” rather than a supergroup aren’t wrong.
The set also found room for wonderfully filthy moment with Black Magic. Altar Bar was packed. The band were magnificent. And I am still thinking about that pedalboard.
