The Preatures launch new album in Brunswick Heads

Sydney band The Preatures celebrated the release of their new album Girlhood with a unique twist on the usual launch party: an intimate carpark show at Sails Motel in Brunswick Heads last night.

The band’s team at Universal chose the recently renovated motel in the quiet, sunny northern NSW town for the site-specific event because of its “old-school” feel: all white stucco walls with blue trim, across the road from a wooden church with a faded red roof, the venue evoked family trips to sleepy beach towns.

Speaking before the show, lead singer Izzi Manfredi and guitarist/producer Jack Moffitt agreed it was just the right vibe for the new album. While it doesn’t fit into any single genre, with tracks ranging from something like funk to synth-heavy pop, the pair resist lazy labels for the sound like “retro”, preferring something like “Australiana”. The songs that were on the radio when they were kids, from Icehouse to INXS, were “pushing an AUstralian sound”, Manfredi says, reflecting “a sort of pride.”

“[Australians] were being written to in a way they hadn’t been written to before,” adds Moffitt.

“Nostalgia’s a powerful thing.”

So is the lure of a show by a nationally acclaimed indie band in a town with a population of just over 1600; as the Preatures soundchecked just before 5pm, with Manfredi’s vocals and the chime of a guitar in the air several streets away, dreadlocked locals on bikes peered in curiously over the gate. And with the band due onstage at 7pm and doors at 6, there were eager competition winners from Byron Bay and Lennox Head lining up from 5:45pm.

Before the show kicked off, a young representative from the Bundjalung nation gave a beautiful welcome to Country, describing how the waterways of the Northern Rivers region spread like tree roots to give life to the area for thousands of years. It was an appropriate opening to the show given the release last week of ‘Yanada’, the latest single from Girlhood, which features a shimmering chorus co-written with Sydney Dharug songwoman Jacinta Tobin and sung on the record by both Tobin and Manfredi in Dharug language.

The new material played well to the eager crowd at the front, and the energy onstage benefited hugely from the three women who joined them onstage from the second song, ‘I Know A Girl’ – two backing singers, as well as singer-songwriter Sarah Belkner on keys and BVs – with Manfredi referring to them as “new members”. But the band and the audience were equally excited to play and hear fan favourites like ‘Somebody’s Talking’ and closer ‘Is This How You Feel’. And this being a rock’n’roll show in the Byron Shire, of course, a subtle waft of weed was noticeable in the clear night air.

Girlhood might be a subtler and more exploratory record than debut Blue Planet Eyes, but The Preatures are as confident, charismatic and defiantly Australian as ever.