One of the most rousing Australian bands of the moment, Melbourne indie-punk trio, Camp Cope will return to the Sydney Opera House in July for an exclusive Sydney performance in the grand Concert Hall, set to be one of their final shows for 2018.
Wednesday 25 July 2018
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Their Concert Hall debut will celebrate a triumphant year with fans, who last saw the empowering band play the Sydney Opera House during two blistering sold-out shows in the intimate Drama Theatre as part of Vivid LIVE 2017.
In the twelve months since, they’ve released their highly-anticipated sophomore album How To Socialise & Make Friends – praised by Pitchfork as “humming with rage and retribution, executed with biting specificity and vast emotional range” – headlined Melbourne’s Weekender Fest and The Forum (both 2017), toured the US for the first time playing 13 states with Brooklyn band Worriers, and last month performed a sold-out Australian tour.
Sydney Opera House Head of Contemporary Music, Ben Marshall, says: “Camp Cope’s poignant vocalisation of empathy, rage and deadpan humour is cutting a swathe through the current musical landscape, so it is fitting we welcome them back to the Sydney Opera House’s biggest room for their debut headline performance here. The times are suiting Camp Cope’s raw, vulnerable, poetic punk rock catharsis and it’ll be nothing short of astonishing to witness their focused ambition fill the Concert Hall in 2018.”
Formed in a Melbourne backyard over home-job tattoos in 2015, the burgeoning trio are now a magnetic force in the Australian music industry. From the fervent yet vulnerable vocals of Georgia McDonald, to the integral parts of bassist Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and drummer Sarah Thompson, Camp Cope has captured the zeitgeist of 2018 through their authentic and fearless music.
Released in March, How To Socialise & Make Friends anchors on the cycles of life, loss and growth through resilience and the defining moments of finding and being yourself. Following their self-titled debut album and its Australian Music Prize shortlisting, this year’s release is stronger and more focused than ever. Simultaneously heart-breaking and gritty, the album skips from the fierce lead track ‘The Opener’, which calls out the lack of gender diversity in the music industry, the brave and honest account of sexual assault in the harrowing song ‘The Face Of God’, to the joys of non-romantic relationships with female friends in ‘Sagan-Indiana’ and ‘Anna’.
Written before the phenomenon of the #MeToo movement, the album is deeply relevant in today’s social commentary, with The Guardian naming Camp Cope as “the raw sound of the #MeToo generation”.