The Inadequates (Canberra)

About

From busking in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall to Gympie Music Muster and Blue Mountains Music Festival, Brisbane trio The Inadequates have built one of the most distinctive live shows in Australian acoustic music — and they're still stuck with the name they picked as a placeholder.

Jackson Church, Marcus Church and Lawson Mackriell started out playing Queen Street Mall on Friday nights, wearing bright suits to catch the eye of passers-by. The suits stayed. So did the name, which they came up with on a bad day at the hardware store where all three worked.

Mandolin, accordion, acoustic guitar and double bass, wrapped in bright three-part harmony — this is acoustic music played with the volume and abandon of a rock band. The band cite Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek and Mumford & Sons; audiences tell them they sound like an acoustic Alice In Chains. They land somewhere in between, with an accordion. The stage suits are hand-embroidered by the band themselves, which is why Cobargo Folk Festival called them the best-dressed band on the folk scene.

Their debut album "Haven't You Heard?" spans twelve tracks of love songs told from unsettling angles, breakup ballads, drunken waltzes and sharp-elbowed satire — folk stretched into theatre without ever losing its emotional core. The title has yet to receive a single yes.

What You'll Hear

A full-throttle evening of originals from Haven't You Heard?, alongside reimagined covers, unrecorded material, and the between-song banter that explains the…