More than a dozen artists are taking part in the Port Melbourne Music Crawl on Sunday 8 June.
The long-weekend event is taking over a string of venues around Port Melbourne, including the area’s best-known pubs The Palace, The Local, The Exchange, and Connolly’s Public House, the open-plan CBCo Brewing, cocktail and tapas bar the Tipsy Cow, and the Liardet Community Centre.
The lineup includes You Am I frontperson Tim Rogers, garage-spun pop duo Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me!, punk rock songwriter Emilee South, Afro-fusion ensemble One Spirit Africa, and loads more.
Port Melbourne Music Crawl
- Sunday 8 June
- The Local, CBCo Brewing, The Tipsy Cow, The Exchange Hotel, The Cornerstone, Connolly’s Public House, The Palace, Liardet Community Hall and more
The lineup
- Bay Street Brass
- John Wayne
- Tim Rogers
- Nii Odai Nmai
- Don’t Thank Me Spank Me
- DJ Sheriff
- Ellen James
- Coby Grant
- Sage Roadknight
- Karl S Williams
- Sally Wiggins
- The Last Port
- One Spirit Africa
- The Mansplainers
- Emilee South
- Jungle Jim Smith
- Tillerman Pete
- Stacey Pommer
- Charles Jenkins
- Mila & Lucas
- Leif
- Manasis Greek Dancing
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You’ll find Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me! performing on the CBCo Brewing stage at 1.30 pm. The Naarm-based duo’s self-titled debut album was recently nominated for Best Independent Punk Album or EP at the AIR Awards. It’s up against releases by Dune Rats, Gut Health, Radio Free Alice and Regurgitator.
No one’s more surprised about the nomination than Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me! guitarist and vocalist, Nitida Atkinson. “It really came out of the blue,” she says. “But it feels really, really, really lovely. There’s a lot of work that goes into the whole album, so to have that nomination, it’s a big cheers emoji.”
The album is a stylistic melting pot. Atkinson and bandmate, bassist and vocalist Esther Henderson, are influenced by everything from 70s rockers The Runaways and Electric Light Orchestra to Britney Spears and 90s R&B. So, do they see themselves as a punk band?
“We’ve never put ourselves into a genre,” says Atkinson. “And yeah, sure, we love a lot of punk music, but we’ve never assumed that we are punk.”
There is a lot about Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me! that is punk, however, in spirit more than aesthetic. “We don’t quite commit to the yelly vocals and the loud guitar,” Atkinson says. “But it’s more of an attitude of honestly not caring what people think.”
This attitude underlies everything Atkinson and Henderson do together. The pair started Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me! with the express purpose of following their impulses, and having a great time doing so.
“We didn’t make the band with the intention to fit into a scene or to be sellable to a record company,” Atkinson says. “So, it’s been born out of a really beautiful, true friendship. And that is what drives it really.”
And besides, the duo’s taste in music is too broad to tie themselves to just one genre. Some songs on the album, such as Hott Mess, feature dramatic strings, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and layers of backing vocals, while others, such as Sandy, are all scratchy guitars and frivolous vocal interplay.
Atkinson and Henderson are conscious of their influences when writing songs, but they’re not doggedly pursuing a particular sound.
“It’s never, ever going to sound like Britney Spears because of the way that we do it,” Atkinson says, referring to the band’s fun-oriented, lo-fi approach. “It’s more of an attitude than an intention. A bit of a daydream of the whole thing.”
The album has its share of loose, garage rock moments, but the live show cranks everything up a notch. Atkinson and Henderson will be joined onstage at the Port Melbourne Music Crawl by a drummer. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to flesh out the live show in the 12 months since the album came out, including during their debut tour of Japan earlier this year.
“That was absolutely crazy and incredible,” Atkinson says. “We were playing in the garage rock scene in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto. It was so crazy. But people there actually knew us – they were singing along to the lyrics and bringing us presents.”
The Japan tour followed a sold-out album launch at The Tote and follow-up sell-outs at the Curtin and the Old Bar. Atkinson has a theory as to why Don’t Thank Me, Spank Me!’s music has connected with audiences at home and abroad.
“[The band exists] for wholesome reasons,” she says. “It’s for friendship and it’s for the love of it. And it’s for world domination – we really do believe that we’re the best band in the world.”
Find out for yourself at the Port Melbourne Music Crawl on Sunday 8 June. Details here.
This article was made in partnership with the Port Melbourne Music Crawl.
