Are you ready for the madcap chaos of Australia’s largest travelling music festival? Good Things season returns with a head-spinning line-up fit for a fever dream. Across three East Coast dates, this year’s Good Things Festival will deliver a trip down the rabbit hole with a stacked bill of international heavyweights, old favourites, hungry up-and-comers, and Aussie staples. And in a boon for younger attendees, Sydney’s Centennial Park festival date will be a 16+ event for the first time!
In the lead-up to Good Things 2024, HEAVY will be running a small feature on the bands playing so you can get up to speed before the big day. Today we bring you FRANK TURNER AND THE SLEEPING SOULS.
Earlier this year Frank Turner released his anticipated tenth album Undefeated via Xtra Mile Recordings. The album is the follow-up to his first UK #1 album, 2022’s FTHC, and sees him again embracing the liberation of being an independent artist. In celebration of the release, Frank shared a new video for the album track International Hide & Seek Champions, featuring footage from the campaign.
It also saw Turner embark on a groundbreaking venture: the first-ever Music Venue Trust world record attempt to play the most gigs in different cities in 24 hours by playing fifteen shows across the country. The previous (official) record is held by Hunter Hayes with ten shows, and before that it was the Flaming Lips with eight. But there’s a serious point too. The challenge will support grassroots venues and independent record stores across the country. Frank’s effort will be supported by London’s No. 1 Taxi app FREENOW, who will be providing e-taxis for him to complete the almost 500-mile journey, which runs from Liverpool to Southampton. All the shows aside from London Underworld (at 4am) are now sold out.
Frank also announced the monumental news that his landmark 3000th show has been scheduled for London’s iconic Alexandra Palace on 22 February, 2025. In the run-up to his landmark 3000th show party, Frank’s schedule remains packed, playing a run of European dates in May, including shows as special guests on NOFX’s final tour, before heading across North America in late May and throughout June. He will play a series of UK headline shows (that have now all sold-out) and festivals in the summer (Glastonbury, Docksfest, 2000trees, Latitude and Y NOT?) before taking the seventh instalment of his Lost Evenings extravaganza to Canada for the first time in September.
Thematically, Undefeated finds the sweet spot between youthful outspokenness and surviving midlife’s challenges, it’s a record that explores both emotionally compelling topics and lighter reflections on those troubles that eventually come to us all. Sonically it’s full of echoes to influences that Frank has touched upon at various moments in his kaleidoscopic career, from Black Flag to Counting Crows, from Descendents to The Pogues, via Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg.
“There are no clichés about the difficult 10th album, so in some ways, that’s a liberating statement. But at the same time, I have a duty to justify writing and releasing a 10th album. That’s a lot of records for anybody. Also, I’m 42. Which is not a sexy, rock’n’roll age. But all through my career, I’ve been interested in writers like Loudon Wainwright III or The Hold Steady, people who write about adulthood, essentially.”
FRANK TURNER.
Focus track, I Still Believe. Get your Good Things tickets HERE
