Dune Rats bring upbeat party vibe to Whistler

It’s fair to say most of the music coming out of the lockdown era is pretty devoid of an upbeat party vibe.

Contemplative? Sure. Reflective? Definitely. But that’s not going to serve you well in a mosh pit.

Enter Aussie rock three-piece Dune Rats for a breath of fresh air.

“We just came off a big tour—the biggest tour we had ever done in Australia,” recalls BC Michaels, drummer and backing vocalist for the group. “The day after the last show of the tour, we went into lockdown. We thought it would be a few months so we thought, ‘F*ck yeah, let’s [write the new album] now.’”

So they holed up in New South Wales, whittled down 60 song ideas, and ultimately came up with the 10 tracks that make up Real Rare Whale, released last July.

Tailor-made for sweaty, high-energy shows, the album shares its slacker-rock aesthetic with punk-rock energy and packs it all into a blistering 28 minutes.

Stand-outs range from the strangely sweet “Pamela Aniston,” an ode to two ’90s TV sweethearts and the crushes they prompted, to the fist-pumping singalong “Up.”

“We waited and waited [to release it] and, eventually, when things opened up, we were ready to go,” Michaels says. “But then there was a delay in the vinyl, getting the actual albums. It came out in July last year, but it’s funny … You get reintroduced to it when you have to play and you get excited about it again.”

In interviews, the band has cited the new album—maybe a little jokingly—as demonstrating their growth, since there are exactly zero curse words and only one drinking song.

“It feels like it, some ways,” Michaels says. “We don’t need to rely on f*ck, c*nt, and marijuana. We can rely on the melodies and songs and other content that isn’t a gimmick, basically, but still have the same fun vibe and scratching the itch you want in our music.”

The band is just a few dates into an American tour—with a cross-Canada trek on the roster after that—but they’re ready for the work.

“We’ve just finished three shows of the 47-show tour and I’m looking forward to all of them,” Michaels says.

When they head North, they’re set to hit up major cities, as well as two mountain towns known for their Aussie transplants—Whistler and Banff.

“I think we played them both before last time and they’re just really fun shows. And so we thought, ‘Why not come back?’” Michaels adds.

(The Whistler show at Garfinkel’s quickly sold out for Feb. 12, so another show on Feb. 13 was added, but, sadly for those without tickets, it has since sold out too.)

If you can’t make it to the show, the next best thing might just be the videos the band has released from the record. There’s the beer-fuelled golf cart romp of “LTD,” the dreamy—and grainy—love story chronicled in “Melted Into Two,” and the elaborate dance-routine-turned-fight scene in “Up.”

“We just finished the last video,” Michaels says. “They have been really fun to make, but we’re ready to get into writing once we finish touring. When you really like the song, it’s easy to make the video for it.”

Keep your eyes on the internet for tickets—you might just get lucky.