dave studdert

_{Dave Studdert.}

When drawn to writing about Tactics, their new album and their forthcoming Australian tour, I had a youthful flashback to being a 17-year-old and moving down to Sydney from the bush. Armed with smudgy-ink copies of RAM magazine, I was aware of so many bands that I knew mostly in name only: Midnight Oil, Hitmen, The Saints…and some weird shit (at least in my mind) like The Tactics, Thought Criminals and Dead Travel Fast. I was like a sponge and I wanted to see every one of them.

I had a hunger for a tapestry of sounds and new, sharp sonic edges - stuff that was so far from the bland radio fodder like Cold Chisel and Dragon. I left a live music scene centred on a dilapidated pub by a river that often flooded…a place with peeling paint and populated by old tradies with battered faces, professional alcoholics and underage kids. We watched the odd cover band and the place was home to weekend rock-stars playing poorly -delivered Chuck Berry riffs. The alternative was the local blue light disco that usually ended in a bloodbath by the end of the night.

So, I moved. I headed to Sydney.

Seminal post punk group Tactics are playing their first Australian shows since 2008, with dates in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

Emerging from the murky depths of Canberra's punk scene in 1977, this critically acclaimed underground band led by Dave Studdert released six albums over a decade. Studdert now lives in Europe but his band’s post-punk pop and stripped-down psychedelia was a staple on the Sydney underground scene of the 1980s.

On the eve of the release of their seventh album, Tactics will play Marrickville Bowling Club in Sydney on August 9, The Foundry in Brisbane on August 10 and Melbourne’s Curtin Hotel on August 15.