Radium Dolls are a flavourful, caustic bite of Aussie punk.
They erupted onto the scene with their 2024 album Legal Speed and the seismic singles and EPs that preceded it, from the sorrowful Tractor Parts in 2022 and the Iggy Pop adjacent CIA in 2023, to classic pub punk bangers such as All The Time. These distinctly ocker stylings are energetically raucous. Logical, my chat with CWill, Ewan, Bryce and Tom should have been done under the heat of the scorching Queensland sun, tinnie in hand, but Google Meets and Earl Grey works too.
“I got a bit fascinated with researching radiation therapy for a bit there. There was a group of workers back in the ’20s called the radium girls who won a famous lawsuit, and I just thought that was so badass,” says lead singer Will, relaxed enough over our choppy call.
Radium Dolls
- When: 20 June
- Where: Evelyn Hotel
- Grab tickets here
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“I didn’t want to take their name though, so my partner at the time said, ‘What about radium dolls?’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, that will do.’”
Frequenting classic Brisbane venues such as The Zoo, Radium Dolls tips their hats to Aussie punk, although they seem happy enough to stay outside that realm, focusing on their work without overt reverence to the genre.
“I feel like real punk people are always saying that you’re not really punk enough. There are aspects to what we do; we have punk songs in our repertoire. I do love punk though, so I wouldn’t be mad at all if they called us that. I would almost call us folk punk,” says Will.
Drummer Bryce reflects on how the band came together. “I think we spend a lot of time elsewhere. We’re all from different places. I think the music scene in Brisbane is really cool but the brothers [Will and Tom] are from Forster New South Wales, Ewan is from the Sunshine Coast and I’m from far north Queensland,” Bryce continues.
“I think Brisbane has a lot of those features that we like most in terms of the music we want to play, so we definitely identify as a Brisbane band.”
“We didn’t come from there, but we all individually fell in love with the place,” says Will. Their love for the Meanjin/Brisbane scene coincides with their love of performance, although, Will adds a distinct caveat.
“It depends on what time it is,” he says, as the rest of the band laugh, “but we give you everything we’ve got.”
Even through their toughest gigs they find a way to push through, although suspicion often kicks in.
“We had this one terrible gig we did at the Gold Coast years ago where I was wearing shorts. We were strung out, there were technical difficulties,” says Will. “After that, I decided that shorts were a curse and I thought, ‘Never again.’”
The band are particularly proud of the live version of Legal Speed, which was performed at Will’s parents’ farm.
“I actually think I like that one more, to be honest,” he says. Tom, the other guitarist, adds, “I think that it was such a large-sounding album. All the songs were formed from strong rehearsals, and it works very well live, and it is such a cool way to experience the songs, especially if you don’t get the chance to see us live.”
One answer I was not expecting came from Will, when asked about the songwriting process.
“We just go, ‘What would the Arctic Monkeys do?’ And just do that exactly,” he laughs. “Really, we just play shit until one of us says, ‘Yep, that works,’” says bassist Ewan.
“We’ll usually take something that Will has already done, and us three will go off and do our own thing, add in instrumental sections, then tell Will when to come back in,” says Bryce.
Radium Dolls intermingle their music with their lived experiences in various ways. “I’d say they blend, I include my experience as a struggling pleb,” says Will, half-serious, although really the Radium Dolls members have a blend of professions: Ewan is a gardener, Tom is a geologist and Bryce is a nutritionist.
Now, the band is evolving, bringing them on their next tour which will bounce from the Gold Coast, to Adelaide, to Wollongong and to Melbourne. Playing divey country bars is just one of the ways the band gives back, nurturing local music scenes like the one in Brisbane that has helped them thrive.
Radium Dolls are playing the Evelyn Hotel on 20 June. Grab tickets here.
