Sydney trio Sweetie have announced an east coast Australian tour in support of their forthcoming debut album ‘Dogtooth’, while also sharing new single ‘Pay Rise’.
The Sweetie album lands September 25th via Blossom Rot Records,Find with the band then heading out across Brisbane, Port Kembla, Melbourne and Sydney from late October through November.
‘Pay Rise’ is the third single lifted from ‘Dogtooth’, following ‘Godzilla’ and the album’s title track, and finds Sweetie turning their attention towards corporate repetition, performative consumption and the glossy promise of getting ahead.
Sweetie ‘Dogtooth’ Australian Tour
- Friday, October 30th – Brisbane/Meanjin, Junk Bar
- Sunday, November 8th – Port Kembla/Dharawal, The Servo
- Saturday, November 14th – Melbourne/Naarm, Thornbury Bowlo
- Saturday, November 28th – Sydney/Gadigal, Heaps Normal Health Club
Find out more here.
Pay Rise video
Drummer Rikki Clark says the track grew out of the numb routine of commuting and trying to reconcile personal ambition with a creeping sense that the whole system is rotten.
“Pay Rise is about finding myself on the train every morning, not really remembering getting on, and gearing up for another day of corporate entanglement while I make empty promises to myself about doing a bit of good when I get some free time. It’s about wanting to bring the nice wine to the party and wear the cool-girl clothes, while also boiling over with rage at how flippantly my generation perpetuates a culture of disposability and excess. Mostly, it’s about realising I don’t know how to get off the train.”
Sweetie Put The ‘Girlboss’ Under A Microscope
The accompanying video (above), directed by Sweetie themselves, drops the trio into a miniature pastel corporate kingdom, where their characters have climbed the ladder so successfully that the world around them starts to close in.
The band describes it as “a playful swing at the problematic icon of millennial feminism: the Girlboss.”
“We wanted to create a world in which our characters have made it to the top of the corporate ladder and beyond, free to reign over men and toy cars. These big chicks are all powerful in their cardboard castle, but with their insatiable appetites they outgrow the space, and it begins to suffocate rather than sustain them.”
It’s a pretty tidy visual metaphor for the kind of pressure running through ‘Dogtooth’.
Recorded with producer Anna Laverty, mixed by Wade Keighran and mastered by George Nicholas, the 11 track record pulls from post-punk, gothic country and rough-edged rock while digging into gender, capitalism and the politics attached to simply existing in public.
Formed during lockdown in 2020 by Lily Keenan, Rikki Clark and Lucy Warriner, Sweetie have spent the years since steadily sharpening their sound rather than sanding it smooth.
Tracklist
1. Night Bitch
2. Godzilla
3. Modern Myth
4. My Kids Deserve the World (Vision)
5. Hanging Rock
6. Last Breath
7. Dogtooth
8. Pay Rise
9. Ramona
10. Spit
11. Reprise
‘Dogtooth’ arrives September 25th.
