If Dead Letter Circus is a sleeping giant, Tasmania is daybreak.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The band set itself a mammoth task earlier this year by releasing and touring an acoustic album - a considerable side-step for a band known for heavy rock.
The 11-track offering The Endless Mile saw the band draw on all its creative forces to completely re-imagine a chunk of its back-catalogue, including the entirety of its 2007 debut EP.
Now, the Brisbane five-piece has given itself two shows in Tasmania to break off any remaining flecks of acoustic shell in a glorious return to big singalongs and heavy rock.
Frontman Kim Benzie says the band is preparing to break free after being “kept inside a little box”.
“We kind of just need to get out of our rehearsal room and play some heavy shows and just flex that muscle,” Benzie said.
“For the first half of the year we’ve been in a different world of cellos and violins and acoustic guitars and pianos and we’re just craving the heavy vibe.
“What you’re going to be getting is a band that’s been kept in a cage, it’s going to be like a coiled spring ready to unfurl.”
Finding fame in 2010 with debut LP This is the Warning, which debuted at #1 on the ARIA album charts, Dead Letter Circus released two more studio albums before embarking on The Endless Mile project earlier this year.
Benzie said the project - a celebration of the band’s 10-year anniversary - had been the band’s own way of ‘breaking its brand’ and trying something different.
“We just started with the lyrical concepts and then rewrote them from scratch but with an inverse version of the band.
“We weren’t rewriting them in the same register or dynamic, we basically went ‘we’re going to write them as if we’re this ethereal version of Dead Letter Circus’ - some of them are unrecognisable to the original which is really interesting to do.”
Benzie said some songs on the album had been spun into as many as four different incarnations.
“It was actually really hard but once we got the first one done we sort of saw the vision for it.
“We’ll never do anything like that again and I doubt we’ll do the tour again either, so it was a really interesting concept in that it wasn’t a move for the future.
“It was really strange doing a tour knowing it’d be the only time you’ll ever play these songs live and you put like four months of effort into creating and rehearsing it and scoring the strings and piano.”
Dead Letter Circus will play Club 54 on May 6 with support from Cardinels and Actuality.
Doors open at 8pm.