Swapmeet’s Big, Beautiful Indie Noise

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wapmeet knew they had something special as soon as they started playing together. It was 2020, and the four then-teenage musicians were all finishing high school in Adelaide, Australia, when they met. The chemistry at their early jams was “fucking mind-blowing,” says Venus O’Broin.

“It was just so natural and easy,” says her bandmate Jack Medlyn. “You had an idea, and everyone else would jump on whatever instrument and fill it in.”

“Shit was crazy,” O’Broin adds.

That’s a sentiment shared by many who have heard Swapmeet since then. Their 2024 EP Oxalis, which they recorded and mixed entirely on their own, is full of subtle textures that draw you in from the first listen. Delicate slowcore melodies blossom into full-on shoegaze freakouts, each song following its own mysteriously compelling logic. At this year’s SXSW festival, they were equally excellent onstage, playing more than a dozen sets with electric, unpredictable energy that got people talking all over Austin.

A week after those shows, which were their first ever in the U.S., Swapmeet stop by Rolling Stone’s New York office before heading home to Adelaide. The four bandmates — singer-guitarists O’Broin, Medlyn, and Maxwell Elphick, and bass player Josh Doherty, all aged 23 — relax on couches and chairs, laughing at inside jokes and marveling at the view of Manhattan outside the window like any other friend group in a new country. (Elphick and Medlyn also switch off as the band’s drummers.)

“I couldn’t imagine making music with another group ever,” O’Broin says. “We’re just trying to see what the four of us can do together with a whole lot of delusional confidence.”

First up: their full-length debut, Mount Zero, out July 17 on the L.A.-based Winspear label. The album opens with “I Know!,” the catchiest song Swapmeet have ever made, with a needling guitar riff and a tightly wound, restless melody. The rest of the LP moves with the same self-assurance, as O’Broin, Medlyn, and Elphick trade off lead vocals and the band delivers one quiet/loud knockout after another. It’s only indie rock, but it feels like magic. 

If you ask them where their sound comes from, they all answer as one: “Adelaide.” Their hometown is the capital of South Australia, but they describe it as a much smaller-feeling city than, say, Melbourne, which is about an hour away by plane. “Adelaide can feel a little bit disconnected,” Elphick says. “Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, they all have similar music scenes. But Adelaide’s kind of that little underdog outlier.”

While the other three members played in bands or took lessons growing up, O’Broin was more interested in visual art and poetry. Music was a sore subject for most of her childhood. “I wanted to be a singer when I was six,” she says. “I asked my dad if I sounded like Lady Gaga, because I was obsessed with her. My dad said no. I was not happy.” (Her dad, who grew up in Mullingar, Ireland, apologized later that night by showing her a video of Sinead O’Connor and suggested that she keep practicing.)

She spent her teens getting into drawing, painting, and photography, which is how she met Elphick and Doherty. “They were both in a band with some other high school people who were really cool, I thought at least,” she says. “They reached out to get me to take photos of them in year 12, and I did, and then I stole them.” Medlyn joined not long afterward, and the four of them bonded over their shared taste for 2010s acts from the U.S. like Alex G and Twin Peaks.

Two guys from a jangle-pop band, another who was more into psych-rock, and a poet/photographer who’d never really sung before: Somehow it all added up to something unique. “I think we just fill in each other’s gaps in a really interesting way that creates something that couldn’t be replicated with anyone else,” O’Broin says. “And that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily great or anything. It’s just us.” 

They began playing live shows at local bars where they developed their signature soft/hard dynamics. “The most popular venue in Adelaide would be on a Wednesday night, and people wouldn’t really be there for the music. People would be there to drink and stuff. So you kind of need to fight your way to be heard,” Elphick says. “We had a bit of a formula, like, ‘All right, what if we just went really loud after we run out of lyrics?’”

They recorded Mount Zero over two weeks last June at a beach house in nearby Noarlunga. “We loaded up our cars full of all the gear that we had, took it all down there, set up in this room,” Medlyn says. “It was the room we were sleeping in as well. So it had all these bunk beds, which were good for sound absorption.” It was mid-winter in Australia, which helped them focus on the music, layering countless tracks in Ableton to create a rich, nostalgic, ever-changing sound.

“Mount Zero,” the title song, is named after an actual place halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne; they used to see the road sign on their way to gigs, and it became a symbol of in-betweenness and disconnection. “Josh and Venus were asleep, and me and Jack were trying to write the lyrics for the outro,” Elphick recalls. “We were literally lying on the floor with a notebook, feet kicking up, and we’d write something good and start jumping around, like ‘We got it!’”

Other songs reflect the same fun, spontaneous energy. “I Know!” started with an informal pre-show jam. “Bonny” features a semi-random shoutout to the TV show Malcolm in the Middle, just because it fit the number of syllables in the line. (Alternate options included “might cry a little” and “so fucking civil.”) “We’re not the most serious people,” Elphick says.

But the heart of Mount Zero is in devastating songs like “Halfway” and “My Heart Breaks II,” where O’Broin sings about what sounds like the end of a relationship with an exquisite vulnerability.  “Some things happened the very two weeks that we were recording, which was a coincidence,” she says. “Kind of a handy one. It was good timing.”

“Venus got real with that shit,” Doherty says.

When we speak, Swapmeet are still buzzing from their big week at SXSW. “13 shows! I got blisters,” Doherty says. This prompts his bandmates to break out in laughter, and one of them quotes Ringo Starr’s famous “Helter Skelter” line: “I got blisters on my fingers!”

Toward the end of the interview, Elphick mentions another milestone: He recently completed a college degree in electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Adelaide. In fact, he adds, “My graduation is today, but I’m missing it.”

“It’s a good reason,” Doherty teases him. “‘Sorry, I can’t make it, I’m at Rolling Stone.’”