I Heart Hiroshima

In the late '70s and early '80s, underground bands like the Saints and the Go-Betweens flourished in Brisbane despite — or perhaps because of — the tight police control of festivals and the shuttering of concert venues under the state's premier, Joh Bjelke-Pietersen. In the mid-2000s something similar, if less harsh, happened again: a crackdown on the enforcement of noise-restriction laws closed venue after venue, and bands started playing house parties because there was nowhere else. Part of the city was eventually carved out as a designated Entertainment Precinct where the noise laws didn't apply, but by then another underground scene had already grown up. I Heart Hiroshima were that scene in miniature, a three-piece formed at a house party in 2005. All three original members — Susie Patten, Matthew Somers and Mel Ralph — had played in other indie bands. Patten had drummed and played trumpet, sometimes at the same time, in the Mean Streaks, and she became the band's de facto leader. She sang as well as drummed, and rather than hiding demurely behind the kit she stood over it, leering at the audience, punkishly slapping herself with the tambourine and jerking her head like a toy monkey. Somers shared lead vocals while playing guitar, his androgynous voice set against Patten's yelps. Ralph left in the band's early months and was replaced by a second guitarist, Cameron Hawes, and the three of them decided to stay bass-less, which pushed their sound further out on its own. They gigged relentlessly, more than 100 concerts in two years. They had enough material for an album almost immediately, but Valve Records talked them into starting with EPs to build an audience, and two arrived in 2006, A Three Letter Word for Candy and Cut in Colour, both blending post-punk and pop/rock. The debut album Tuff Teef followed in 2007, along with support slots for touring acts as varied as Cat Power, Conor Oberst and Tricky.