Words by Augustus Welby // Left image by Zack Michael
The countdown is on for the 2022/23 summer festival season. People around Australia are preparing to witness loads of great live music accompanied by dear friends and a couple of cold drinks. Life Without Andy has partnered with Smirnoff – who’re ushering in the festival season with the launch of their new Smirnoff Seltzer Cocktails – to curate a playlist in anticipation of the full-scale return of the summer festival season.
Smirnoff’s Seltzer Cocktails range includes two new flavours: Spicy Margarita and Watermelon Margarita. They’re bubbly, colourful, and low in sugar and only 107 calories per 250mL can, for when it’s time to have a pre-festival dance and sing-along with your festival-going squad.
Speaking of festival music, we’re spoiled for choice this summer, with a raft of high-profile and rising international and Australian talent performing live around the country. To help get you amped for a few big days in the sun, here’s our Smirnoff Seltzer Cocktail pre-festival playlist featuring the best artists from Australia’s upcoming Summer Festivals:
PinkPantheress – ‘Just for me’
Who better to revive the sound of early-2000s UK garage and 2-step-influenced pop music than someone who was born in the UK in the early-’00s? The 20-year-old PinkPantheress mightn’t have been in the club for the original release of songs by Craig David and Artful Dodger, but on the viral hit ‘Just for me’, PP proves that’s not a prerequisite for executing a satisfying revival.
Appearing at: Heaps Good (SA), Falls Festival (NSW)
Arctic Monkeys – ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’
Any band that achieves enormous popularity from the get-go faces a future of loudmouths complaining about how they’ve lost their way and betrayed their fans. Arctic Monkeys have been hearing a lot of this since releasing 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, an album that forewent the jagged guitars of their youth and the hip hop beats of their commercial peak.
They haven’t let the angry mob get to them, however, with their first post-Tranquility single, ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’, retaining that album’s piano-led singer-songwriter classicism and penchant for cinematic string sections a la Serge Gainsbourg and Scott Walker.
Appearing at: Heaps Good (SA), Falls Festival (NSW)
Nyxen – ‘Running’
Nyxen’s recent debut album, PXNK, tempers the artist’s electronic sensibilities with an injection of live instrumentation, creating a sound reminiscent of mid-2000s indie synth-pop (a la Van She, Metric, Klaxons). But ‘Running’, the song that put Nyxen on the map in 2016, is pure upbeat house music topped with a hooky, if ephemeral, lead vocal.
Appearing at: Ice Cream Factory (WA)
Arno Faraji – ‘Gravity’
Perth genre-straddling hip hop and dance artist Arno Faraji worked on his recent single ‘Gravity’ with producers Moktar and Younique, both solo artists in their own right. The trio of rising talent avoids a too-many-cooks scenario by rooting ‘Gravity’ in a consistent synth-bass line that’s as infectious as Faraji’s agile lead vocals.
Appearing at: Ice Cream Factory (WA)
King Stingray – ‘Lupa’
Much has been made of King Stingray’s familial ties to Yothu Yindi—vocalist Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu is the nephew of the late Yothu Yindi vocalist and songwriter Dr M. Yunupiŋu, while guitarist Roy Kellaway’s father, Stuart Kellaway, is Yothu Yindi’s founding bass player.
On ‘Lupa’, the lead track from King Stingray’s recent debut album, the Arnhem Land quintet sound more akin to Yothu Yindi’s former touring partners, Midnight Oil. It’s a loose and anthemic rock’n’roll number, albeit with lyrics in Yolŋu Matha and an essential injection of yidaki.
Appearing at: Heaps Good (SA), Falls Festival (NSW)
Peggy Gou – ‘It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)’
Peggy Gou has been releasing music since 2016, but it was 2018’s ‘It Makes You Forget’ that brought the Berlin-based, South Korean producer to international attention. Like much of Gou’s subsequent house music ear-candy, ‘It Makes You Forget’ is a multi-purpose club banger; a song to lure you out of the house and a song to calm your nerves in a public place.
Gou fiddles with acid house bass tones and adds an effervescent lead vocal. The extended version goes for six and a half minutes, but ‘It Makes You Forget’ is sufficiently charming to leave on repeat for a good hour.
Appearing at: Heaps Good (SA), Falls Festival (NSW)
Genesis Owusu – ‘GTFO’
Over the space of roughly 18 months, Genesis Owusu went from plucky Kendrick Lamar fan and low-key hip hop wunderkind to one of the country’s most esteemed contemporary musicians, whose debut album, Smiling With No Teeth, won just about every accolade it could find.
So, how does one follow such abundant success? With a wave and a polite nod? No way. On Owusu’s latest single, ‘GTFO’, he announces Smiling With No Teeth season is over and introduces a new character, Roach, who’s described as a “struggler” doing what he can to “get through hell and high water.” More significant than these peripheral details is the fact that ‘GTFO’ is a profane rap-anthem in the making.
Appearing at: Falls Festival (NSW)
Jamie xx – ‘LET’S DO IT AGAIN’
Jamie xx’s solo work shares scarce common ground with his day job as the in-house producer and synth player for London indie-pop trio The xx. But despite Jamie xx’s solo work containing elements of house, dancehall and UK garage, he follows the lead of The xx in continuing to aim his bow directly at the heartstrings.
Jamie’s latest single, ‘LET’S DO IT AGAIN’, entered his live sets in 2021, just as the world was waking up from its Covid hibernation. Jamie has called it a song of “tension, drama and catharsis”, but all we’re hearing is joyous release, captured by the song’s two repeating refrains, “I get high on your love” and “Let’s do it again.”
Appearing at: Heaps Good (SA), Falls Festival (NSW)
Dameeeela – ‘The Shake Up’
Dameeeela spent years DJing in the clubs of Brisbane and on the stages of festivals such as Splendour In The Grass, Listen Out and Laneway before releasing any music of her own. The Meanjin-based Yuggera woman’s debut single, ‘The Shake Up’, finally arrived in February 2022, going hard on rave synths and hi-NRG drum beats.
Dameeeela was driven to create the track after inviting brothers Geoff and Jake Fabila of Brisbane trio Tjaka onto her 4ZZZ radio show. The Fabilas utilise the Didjeribone, a multi-note slide didgeridoo, which Dameeeela identified as a sound altogether lacking from club playlists.
“I just made what I wanted to hear in a club, which is some sick didgeridoo and a pumping dance track,” Dameeeela told Tone Deaf earlier this year. And so, ‘The Shake Up’ was born.
Appearing at: Falls Festival (NSW)
Elsy Wameyo – ‘River Nile’
Elsy Wameyo’s long-awaited debut EP, Nilotic, arrived in April 2022. The very nature of the release—an immersive concoction of anti-colonial hip hop, African-influenced soul/R&B music and Christian spiritualism—was shaped by Wameyo’s experiences waiting out the pandemic in Adelaide, learning to produce her own tracks while completing a media degree.
Wameyo finished the degree, but it’s not something she’ll need anytime soon. Songs like ‘River Nile’, one of Nilotic’s harder-edged rap tracks, are evidence of why Wameyo’s riding out the year performing at each Falls festival date.
Appearing at: Falls Festival (NSW)
Learn More About Smirnoff Seltzer’s New Cocktail Range
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