indie-rock -

The Belair Lip Bombs, one last show before they take on the world 🌏

Things are hotting up this winter as we add another show to our August weekend.

Frankston indie-rockers The Belair Lip Bombs headline The Sound Doctor in their last Australian show before a run of dates across Europe and the USA.

Four friends, heartfelt songs, and a sound built on genuine bond and friendship. Quick-footed rhythms, warm and fuzzy guitars, and lead singer Maisie’s cathartic vocals come together on tight, catchy melodies that have earned the band a huge following both here and overseas. We know you’re going to love this one.

Their 2025 album Again was the first Australian release on Jack White‘s label Third Man Records, and it’s been winning praise everywhere it lands, including a glowing mention from The Guardian as one of the year’s best. They’ve toured it around the country, and now they’re taking it abroad.

The Belair Lip Bombs cut their teeth playing at Singing Bird Studios, an all-ages venue and recording space in Frankston, so they know exactly how important live music is to communities like ours here on the Surf Coast. This is shaping up to be a great night for all ages, with under-18s welcome alongside a parent or guardian.

Fri 14 August 7pm
Anglesea Memorial Hall
Tickets $40 (limited $30 tix for Under 30s) HERE

Grab a ticket NOw!

Fruit Bats (USA) & The Lazy Eyes headed to Anglesea

As the cold settles in on the coast, The Sound Doctor is heating things up with the announcement of not one, but two huge shows!

Bonny Light Horseman’s Eric D. Johnson returns to Anglesea on Sat 15 August as Fruit Bats, one of the most in-demand live acts in indie folk-rock.

Then on Grand Final eve, Fri 25 September, psych-folk four-piece The Lazy Eyes bring Cheesy Love Songs (their latest album, but also featuring some cheesy love songs) to the coast.

Two shows we know Sound Doctor fans will love!

On Sale Now

Fruit Bats (USA) solo
🗓 Sat 15 Aug 7pm
📍Anglesea Memorial Hall
🎟 Tickets $50 – 60 HERE

The Lazy Eyes
🗓 Fri 25 Sep 7pm
📍Anglesea Memorial Hall
🎟 Tickets $35 HERE

Sonny & The Sunsets from the West Coast to the Surf Coast! 🏄‍♀️

We’re excited to welcome Sonny & The Sunsets to Anglesea this spring for a rare, intimate night of jangly garage-pop and gently surreal storytelling.

Beloved San Francisco songwriter Sonny Smith returns to Australia with an all-star local lineup featuring Steph Hughes (Dick Diver, Boomgates), Shaun Gionis (The Green Child, Boomgates), and Mark Monnone (The Lucksmiths, Monnone Alone). Together, they’ll bring Sonny’s sun-faded world of boardwalks, diners, backstreet parties and motel rooms to life on the Sound Doctor stage.

Over more than a dozen albums, Sonny has built a cult following for his melodic warmth, lo-fi charm, and offbeat humour. His shows are playful, poetic and quietly unforgettable—equal parts concert, confession and dream sequence.

This is a one-night-only performance from one of indie music’s most quietly iconic voices.

🗓 Saturday 4 October, 7:30pm $45
📍 Anglesea Memorial Hall
🎟 Get your tickets here: events.humanitix.com/sonny-and-the-sunsets

Come for the melodies. Stay for the strangeness.

Presented by Total Soda, Curtin Touring and The Sound Doctor.

Supported by Surf Coast Events.

🎹 Liz Stringer – The To Survive Tour

Renowned singer-songwriter Liz Stringer brings her powerful new album The Second High to The Sound Doctor this November, as part of her just-announced national To Survive tour.

Launched to critical acclaim in London earlier this year, The Second High marks a bold new chapter for Liz. Known for her searing honesty, magnetic live presence and lyrical force, this new body of work dives deep — rich with piano-driven arrangements, emotional candour and melodic strength.

This is Liz Stringer in full flight: raw, reflective and resonant.

But this tour isn’t just about great music. Presented in partnership with Wombat Housing Support Services, To Survive also shines a light on the growing housing crisis in Australia — raising funds and awareness for the thousands of young people facing homelessness.

One of the album’s standout tracks, ‘To Survive’, tells the true story of a young man growing up on the streets of Melbourne and the community that lifted him up. At every show, audiences will have the opportunity to donate directly to a local housing service — with Liz personally contributing as well.

“There are very few artists in this country that can command an audience like Liz Stringer. And even fewer who can break your heart and put it back together in one song.” — NME Australia

📅 Sunday 16 November 4:30pm
📍 Anglesea Memorial Hall
🎟️ Book Tickets via Humanitix

Join us for a night of unforgettable songs and stories from one of Australia’s most compelling voices, with a cause that couldn’t be more timely.

The To Survive Tour presented by Double J, Remote Control Records, Select Music & Wombat Housing Support Services.

The Sound Doctor is supported by Surf Coast Events.

Bad Bangs join Press Club for one explosive show

Your night out with Press Club just got hotter!

We’re excited to announce that Bad Bangs are set to electrify The Sound Doctor on Friday 23 May 2025, when they support Press Club. Known for their unique blend of garage rock, punk, country and psych influences, Bad Bangs have been building a dedicated following since their formation in 2016.

Their sophomore album, Out Of Character, released in May 2024, showcases their evolving sound and has been lauded for its energetic tracks and introspective lyrics. In September last year Bad Bangs embarked on their first European tour, performing at venues like The Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth. And this May, they’re coming down the coast to deliver an unforgettable live performance.

Check out the clip for their song ‘Contest’ here.

Fri 23 May 7pm
Anglesea Memorial Hall
Tickets $35 on sale now HERE
(Limited $30 for under 30s tickets available)

Are you ready to rock? Press Club announce Sound Doctor show in May

Get set for an ultra-high energy Friday night at The Sound Doctor as indie punk rockers Press Club takes to the Anglesea Memorial Hall stage on Friday 23 May.

Having spent much of 2024 doing what they do best – touring across the UK/Europe, and playing a 44 date national Australian tour supporting Grinspoon – it’s bewildering that Press Club had time to put the finishing touches on their new album.

The Naarm/Melbourne four piece have announced the independent release of their fourth album To All The Ones That I Love, out on 2 May, and they’re heading to The Sound Doctor to celebrate.

Recent singles ‘Wasted Days’ and ‘Champagne & Nikes’ appear on the new album and have seen the band land on the cover of Spotify Local Noise, achieve playlisting on the likes of Spotify All New Rock, New Music Friday AU/NZ, The Local Lise, Rock Out, Student’s Union, Fresh Finds as well as Apple Music’s Good Times, New Music Daily, Breaking Rock, New In Rock and New In Indie.

Seeing Press Club live is next level – don’t miss this electrifying show!

Friday 23 May 2025 7pm
Tickets $35 (Standing only)
Licensed event – Under 18s must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian
Book now at https://events.humanitix.com/press-club

Supported by Surf Coast Events

Celebrate the end of summer with The Grogans

With Bonny Light Horseman on Saturday 1 March already sold out, we’re adding to our opening weekend for 2025 and super excited to announce The Grogans are hitting the Coast on Friday 28 February supported by De Porsal.

The Grogans are one of Australia’s hardest working young bands. Forming in 2016 while in high school, the Melbourne/Naarm trio haven’t stopped since, releasing three EPs – Cacteyed, Twangs n Cans and Grogan Grove, and four albums in Just What You Want, Day To Day, Which Way Is Out and Find Me A Cloud. Each release has seen the genre-hopping trio showcase their musical ability, touching on blues, surf and garage rock as well as manoeuvres in punk and psych. The Grogans have supported an array of Australian and international acts including Ocean Alley, WAVVES (US), Hockey Dad and The Chats as well as sharing festival line-ups with Franz Ferdinand, Los Bitchos and The Teskey Brothers.

Support on the night comes from locals De Porsal, the brainchild of the child brain of De Porsal. From their humble beginnings writing quaint indie rock tunes for simpler times, they now bring you their latest creation known as ‘mutt music’: a hybrid of egg punk, jangly pop rock and industrial psych all wrapped up neatly in their latest LP Dishlickers. It’s fast, dumb, manic and at times scary, but importantly very danceable (but mostly pretty dumb). Simple music for tough times.

Friday 28 February 2025 7.30pm
Tickets $40 (Standing only)
Book now at https://events.humanitix.com/the-grogans

Supported by Surf Coast Events
Presented with C.W. Records & Lonely Lands Agency

2025 starts with US folk supergroup Bonny Light Horseman

Bonny Light Horseman have been announced as part of the line up for Golden Plains, Port Fairy Folk Festival and WOMADelaide. Now we’re excited to share they are also stopping by Anglesea for a headliner show for The Sound Doctor on Saturday 1 March.

Individually there is nothing in the music world the three core members of this band haven’t done – Anaïs Mitchell is a celebrated solo artist as well as the playwright and songwriter behind the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, which notched eight Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Eric D. Johnson is best known as the mind behind beloved indie mainstays Fruit Bats, as a longtime collaborator with The Shins and as a film score composer. Josh Kaufman is a songwriter, producer and position player, who has recorded and performed with artists ranging from Bob Weir to The War on Drugs to Taylor Swift, Hiss Golden Messenger and The Hold Steady. As a group they’ve received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album and been nominated for Best American Roots Performance.

Bonny Light Horseman are heading to Australia with their third release Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free, a sprawling and welcoming album partly recorded in a pub in a tiny coastal village in County Cork, Ireland, that encompasses the group’s captivating artistic layers. Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free is an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity. Confident and generous, it is an unvarnished offering that puts every feeling and supposed flaw out in the open. The themes are stacked high and staked even higher: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time all permeate Bonny Light Horseman’s most vulnerable and bounteous offering to date.

Hearing their musical artistry and the interplay of their harmonies in Anglesea Memorial Hall will be a spinetingling and memorable experience.

Sat 1 March 2025 7.30pm
Tickets $55 (Standing only)
Book now at https://events.humanitix.com/bonny-light-horsemen

Supported by Surf Coast Events
Australian tour presented by Jet Black Cat Music

A.Savage joined by special guests Emma Russack & Lachlan Denton

Co-frontman for celebrated New York City post-punk band Parquet Courts, A. Savage is set to headline The Sound Doctor on Saturday 23 November. And we’re excited to announce Emma Russack & Lachlan Denton as supports.

Emma Russack and Lachlan Denton are prolific songwriters from Melbourne. Somehow, between recording with their respective bands (Snowy Band, Pop Filter, Partner Look and others), they find time to write records together. Something Is Going To Change Tomorrow, Today. What Will You Do? What Will You say? is their latest collaborative project, their fourth(!) in three years. How do they do it? Well, they combine friendship, a desire for writing honest pop music and efficiency (the record was recorded in about 12 hours on tape).

One of the singular indie-rock songwriters of our time, A.Savage returns to Australia from self-imposed exile in Paris to tour his new album Several Songs About Fire. Not your ordinary rock star, A. Savage is also an exhibiting painter and visual artist, voracious reader and thoughtful son of a gun.

Andrew said; “I imagine myself playing these songs in a small club that is slowly burning. Fire is something you have to escape from, and in a way this album is about escaping from something. This album is a burning building, and these songs are things I’d leave behind to save myself.“

Tickets are on sale now to see one of the singular indie-rock songwriters of our time performing a special solo show.

Sat 23 November 7.30pm
Tickets $48
Book now at https://events.humanitix.com/a-savage

Supported by Surf Coast Events, Creative Victoria and Regional Arts Victoria

Parquet Courts frontman A.Savage headlines The Sound Doctor in November

A. Savage is heading to Australia for a run of tour dates in November – and we are very excited to announce that he’ll be stopping by in Anglesea on Saturday 23 November. Described by Stereogum as having “sharp writing and [a] voice distinctive enough that you could recognize them from outer space”, the Parquet Courts frontman is touring in support of his record Several Songs About Fire.

Produced by John Parish in Bristol, Several Songs About Fire is bolstered by the support of Jack Cooper (Modern Nature, Ultimate Painting) and Cate Le Bon, as well as members of Kamikaze Palm Tree and caroline. The end result is tantamount to a psychic odyssey, containing a singular irreverence which is stitched together by Savage’s outsize gifts as a lyricist and observer, a quality Parish calls “an emotional openness guarded by a laconic wit.”

Tickets are on sale now to see one of the singular indie-rock songwriters of our time performing a special solo show.

Sat 23 November 7.30pm
Tickets $48
Book now at https://events.humanitix.com/a-savage

Supported by Surf Coast Events, Creative Victoria and Regional Arts Victoria