Big Cyc, The Analogs, D'Ska Assassins, et Sticky Fingers

One of the most common criticisms of modern rock bands is that they have no personality. That too often, the biggest rock bands of the day will be vacuous, media trained pretty boys who are more likely to say things like “we just like to make music for ourselves and if anyone else likes it, then that’s a bonus” than anything actually interesting. And heaven forbid that they ever smash up a hotel room. Now, there’s an argument to be made that if the music’s still good, then that’s no real problem. Yes, it might be cool to read about it in an interview, but you’re not the one cleaning it all up. However, one of the main possible reasons that bands have a lack of personality these days is because all the personality in music is being shared between Kanye West and Sticky Fingers.

Between the two, it’s difficult to know which one is more like the rock stars of yore. Kanye might have the ego and the chart success, but Sticky Fingers have the stories, and my god do they have them in spades. Even the story of how they formed is outlandish; since it begins with the mother of all chance encounter between lead singer and guitarist Dylan Frost and bassist Paddy Fingers. Frost was doing that most soul sucking of musical chores, busking, on one of the high streets of Newtown, a suburb in New South Wales. Fingers just so happened to be walking past Frost and the club he was busking outside of, and just as Frost was packing away to leave, one of the bouncers implored Frost to “give the bloke some coin, brew!?”

With that, Frost and Fingers started talking and became friends, bonding over their shared love of music and weed. The duo roped in some friends of theirs to play lead guitar, drums and the keyboards and started playing live whenever and wherever people would let them. However, it was back on the same turf that the band had formed on where they really started to get people’s attention. In 2011 they played the Newtown Festival in Newtown’s Camperdown Park, which band and fans alike consider to be a watershed moment. The moment where they evolved from being a garage band that sounded a bit like The Clash to genuine contenders.

The gig offers came thick and fast after that and over the next couple of years the band didn’t say no to any of them. It was then that they picked up a reputation for being utter hellraisers both on and off stage, a reputation that might have dimmed slightly as the stages have got bigger and bigger but each show does still have more than a hint of danger and unpredictability to it. They became cult heroes before their album had even come out and by the time 2013’s “Caress Your Soul” came out, they managed to cash in that buzz for some genuine cult success, even landing the title track on Triple J’s hot 100 songs of the year for good measure.

Since then they’ve began to spread their live mastery all the way over to Europe and beyond, and their getting better and better with every show. Sticky Fingers might be one of the most honest and unpretentious bands we have right now, they’re a bunch of lads from suburban Australia and they down pretend they’re anything else, on record, on stage or off. The difference with them is that they’re also one of the more eclectic and straight up fun bands around right now as well, and they come highly recommended.