Melbourne no-wave, post-punk band Gut Health are gearing up for a show as part of the 2025 Great Southern Nights programme, which runs from late March into April with shows throughout NSW.
The line-up features a heavy-hitting list of Australian acts, with over 300 gigs unfolding across the state. "Our first interstate tour we supported These New South Whales and we played at La La La's [in Wollongong]," Dom Willmott, guitarist and synth-player for Gut Health, says.It'll be a full-circle moment for the band when they return to the same venue for their Great Southern Nights show.
Freshly returned from supporting Scottish group Primal Scream in January (as part of their Australian tour; read our review of the Brisbane show) as well as support gigs for Hiatus Kaiyote in Melbourne and Sydney in late 2024, Gut Health is more than ready to rock La La La's once again.
In terms of performing in other states around Australia, Dom thinks "Melbourne's a little too fat and happy with music or something. . . I don't think people take it for granted but maybe. . . the position of being someone from out of town. . . people are often interested in what's going on because you're from somewhere else more than anything.
"When we went overseas last year, it was fascinating, particularly in Germany, how many people [were fans of] Melbourne, even more so than Australian, kind of punk and rock & roll."
While Dom does think "a lot of people would agree," on Gut Health's "Melbourne sound," he muses on the fact "there's often more people who aren't originally from Melbourne within the local music scene than there are people who grew up in Melbourne.
"Half of us are from Melbourne. . . Eloise, Athena and I all grew up in different areas around Melbourne, and then Adam is from Canberra, Angus is from the Northern Rivers and Myka grew up in Brisbane."
Dom describes the October 2024 release of their debut album 'Stiletto' as "an exhale. . . and then you're sort of left with a blank page and it's like there's plenty of directions we can go in".
In the last two months the band has "really gotten stuck back into songwriting, which has been very exciting and fun. I think there's gonna be kind of a focus on that."
He describes Gut Health as a "daytime rehearsal band. This Wednesday we started in the morning and did a full eight-hour work day which is quite cool. . . it's not often you get the schedules to line up to allow that. Because there's six of us, sometimes we write in little groups and sometimes we write as a whole."
Dom sees the band's creative collaboration as a "really cool and interesting sacred space. . . there's something very challenging and rewarding about trying to make something good with people as opposed to just doing it by yourself.
"If you're making music by yourself, which I also do, you go as far as you're capable of going. My favourite moments are when someone says something radically different to what you had in mind and you drop your ego and just sort of follow their brain and see where that goes.
"There's a surprise element with songwriting because no matter how much you think you're on the same page it's always a little bit different, and we don't really have language to talk about music or sounds so you're always in this weird amorphous vibes, which is really fun."
Gut Health play La La La's (Wollongong) 5 April. The Great Southern Nights programme runs from 21 March to 6 April.
