Violent Soho, Meg Mac, Methyl Ethel and Waax to close Brisbane Festival

BRISBANE band Violent Soho will close the Brisbane Festival on September 29.

Brisbane band Violent Soho have been uncharacteristically quiet of late, playing only a handful of shows since wrapping up their mammoth tour for their album Waco in late 2016, but when the Mansfield-raised rockers were approached to headline the closing-night concert for Brisbane Festival, it proved to be an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The closing-night mini festival, which also features Melbourne singer Meg Mac, Perth art-rockers Methyl Ethel and fellow Brisbane band Waax, takes place on September 29, the same night as Riverfire, and as Violent Soho singer and guitarist Luke Boerdam tells U on Sunday, the invitation to play at Brisbane’s most iconic outdoor stage on the same night as the city’s biggest pyrotechnic display “is one of those ones that wouldn’t be easy to turn down”.

Brisbane band Violent Soho are playing the closing event at Brisbane Festival.

“We’re in a holding pattern while I write the new record,” Boerdam says. “We haven’t shut off all doors to Violent Soho completely, because we obviously love to play gigs, but the majority of offers that come through we’re like ‘nah’, but this one came through and it just felt really good.

“It’s about Brisbane and it’s about Riverfire and it just seems like a really fun gig to do and really appropriate so it was like ‘yeah, let’s take that one’.”

The success of the tour for Waco – which earned the band a gold record in May – has afforded the them the opportunity to take their time with writing and recording the follow-up, and Boerdam, Violent Soho’s primary songwriter, says “this time around we’re not forcing anything at all”.

“You really can’t force it or regiment it … I think I’m far more relaxed in how I’m approaching it than when I started writing Waco. With (2013 album) Hungry Ghost doing really well for us, there was this ‘what’s the follow-up going to be?’

“We can have way more of a breather this time around but no one wants it to be five years, we don’t want it to be like (Guns N’ Roses album) Chinese Democracy,” he laughs. “But I feel like we’ve really closed a chapter on Violent Soho, it felt like one big ride from Hungry Ghost into Waco.”

Boerdam says he’s proud that the band, which includes guitarist James Tidswell, bassist Luke Henery and drummer Mikey Richards, have achieved success on their own terms.

“I’m so proud that we stuck to being the band we wanted to be, made the music we wanted to make and played the gigs that we wanted to play. I guess I accepted that the price that came with that was we don’t get to do that for a living. Now I guess I’m still getting over being proven completely wrong.

“I’m really lucky I fell into this band with three friends, and not three business partners, I didn’t quit my day job to work another day job and I can say with complete sincerity we are the band that would rather work day jobs and do

this on the side if that was the only way to make music our way.”

Brisbane Festival

Closing Party, Riverstage,

Saturday, September 29, from 2pm, from $95.85, ticketmaster.com.au