Los Angeles-based alternative-indie artist Drugdealer has just announced Australian tour dates, to coincide with their upcoming appearance at Nine Lives Festival in March 2023.
DRUGDEALER
AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
SAT 4 MAR | NINE LIVES FESTIVAL, MEANJIN/BRISBANE QLD
MON 6 MAR | FACTORY THEATRE, EORA/SYDNEY NSW
WED 8 MAR | SUMMERTOWN STUDIO, TANDANYA/ADELAIDE SA
THU 9 MAR | CORNER HOTEL, NAARM/MELBOURNE VIC
SAT 11 MAR | MILK BAR, BOORLOO/PERTH WA
Drugdealer’s third and most flavoured album, Hiding In Plain Sight, almost didn’t happen at all. Founder and primary songwriter Michael Collins was ready to throw in the towel having become irritated and diffident with his own singing voice in recent years. Collins had plenty to look back on, with the success of the band’s 2016 debut record The End Of Comedy and their 2019 follow-up Raw Honey, but frequent impulses to hand over the microphone to collaborators such as Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh and Sasha Winn led to the musician descending into uncertainty.
While attending Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths Festival, Collins had a chance encounter with the visionary artist and composer Annette Peacock. “I was so inspired by Annette,” he recalls. “I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn’t singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to L.A., I started coming up with new progressions, which I’d modulate up three half-steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing.”
The furtive conversation allowed Collins to find his own distinctive voice, and as the title of the record implies, the era during which he wrote the bulk of the music was a time spent searching for answers, searching for love. Summoning influences that had eluded him in reality, the record evidently includes a deep cast of characters and cameos including Mikey Long and Josh Da Costa, as well as Southland virtuosos John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Stones Throw) and Daryl Johns (Mac DeMarco, The Lemon Twigs).
Ultimately, Hiding In Plain Sight is an odyssey from philautia – the ability to love oneself – to philia, a greater ability to love and embrace the contributions of those around you. The record is the sound of Michael Collins and Drugdealer getting their groove back.