Studio album / WXI-REL-001
Big Grief
Studio album, 23 August 2019
The debut album, and the record that took the band from Brisbane rooms to national stages.
The record and its year
Big Grief was released on 23 August 2019 through Dew Process and reached number 11 on the ARIA albums chart. It is the debut album, seven years after the band formed, and the first WAAX release with an external record of how it performed.
The year around it is the densest in the whole live register. Six of the twenty-one sourced appearances fall in 2019: SXSW in Austin, Forecastle in Louisville, a North American headline run that included Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles and Soda Bar in San Diego, an Australian tour behind the single "I Am", an east-coast run in November and December, and a dated Brisbane show at The Triffid on 16 August, a week before the album landed.
The line-up shifted around it. James Gatling joined on guitar in 2019 and Chris Antolak left the same year, so the record sits exactly on that handover. A national tour behind the album followed in 2020.
The North American touring left a long tail of city event listings that has since largely been taken down. That is ordinary for event pages, and it is a large part of why a register like this one is worth keeping at all.
Line-up across 2019 - 2021
- Maz DeVita
- Tom Bloomfield
- Ewan Birtwell
- Tom Griffin
- James Gatling
Tenure years are the spine of the line-up record. Per-track credits are not held.
Singles of the period
- FU 2019
- I Am 2019
- Most Hated Girl 2021
Recorded by title and year only.
Live around this record
| Year | Engagement | City |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | SXSW | Austin |
| 2019 | Forecastle Festival | Louisville |
| 2019 | "FU" North American tour | Multiple |
| 2019 | Permanent Records Roadhouse | Los Angeles |
| 2019 | Soda Bar | San Diego |
| 2019 | The Triffid, 16 August | Brisbane |
| 2019 | "I Am" national tour | National |
| 2019 | East coast tour, November - December | National |
| 2020 | "Big Grief" national tour | National |
What this entry does not hold
No tracklist, and no per-track credits. Neither can be checked against a source this archive holds, and printing an unverified one would make the rest of the entry harder to trust rather than easier.
No sleeve artwork either. The graphic above was made for this index; the real artwork for Big Grief remains the copyright of its holders and is not reproduced here.
What it does hold
A release date and a label that can both be checked, the formats it was issued on, the chart position where one exists, and the core line-up across the period around it. Every live row listed on this page comes from a festival schedule, a promoter calendar, a tour announcement or a dated review.
Where two of those disagree, the entry keeps the more conservative reading and says so rather than picking a side quietly. Where only one exists, it is still recorded, because a single sourced listing is worth more than a confident guess. Nothing on this page was filled in to make the entry look more complete than the evidence behind it.
Questions about Big Grief
Curious about the band, the records, or how this archive decides what to record? Start here.
When was Big Grief released?
23 August 2019, through Dew Process. It was issued on cd, vinyl, digital.
How did Big Grief chart?
It peaked at number 11 on the ARIA albums chart.
Who played on Big Grief?
The core line-up across 2019 - 2021 was Maz DeVita, Tom Bloomfield, Ewan Birtwell, Tom Griffin, James Gatling. This index records tenure years rather than per-track credits, so it does not attribute individual parts.
Which singles belong to this period?
FU, I Am, Most Hated Girl. Singles are recorded by title and year only.
