Shady Nasty are a three-piece band from Sydney, Australia. They are a refreshing contrast to the typical Australian surf-rock sound, whose laid-back vocals, recognizable guitar lines, and song structures reinforce an image of the idyllic Australian life. However, as Australia, Sydney in particular, has become increasingly multicultural, the often exclusively white-dominated culture operating within the vacuum of platitudes like “it is what it is” doesn’t always connect with the lived experience of growing up in Sydney.
The singer and guitarist of Shady Nasty, Kevin Stathis, was raised by Chinese immigrant parents. The struggle of balancing the conflicting expectations they placed on him with those of the social context in which he grew up is a frustration you can feel him battle within his music. Shady Nasty was formed on the Central Coast, a part of Sydney free of the pretensions of the inner city. Such an environment clearly informed the band’s fascination with cars, something typically cast as a symbol of Aussie ‘“bogan” (the equivalent of redneck) culture in the inner city. Their album covers feature modded (pimped out) cars, and the lyrics tell tales of being followed by undercover police down the highway. I find this fascination with cars important because this unfiltered embrace of a timeless aspect of Australian suburban culture speaks to the way immigrant children search for a sense of belonging in the things that other Australians might find cliché or shallow. As a symbol, cars stand in defiance against the intellectualism of the inner city and offer inclusion to those who love music but can’t relate to the elitist university culture, which often dominates Sydney’s music scene.
The band reflected on this in a 2023 interview with VICE where they declared, “It’s important to us that people might glimpse a fresh vision of what living in Sydney can look like today—particularly, as our online and offline worlds are further enmeshed.” Furthermore, they stressed, “We were keen to highlight a niche we felt had been overlooked or unappreciated; one melded by digital obsessions, modded cars and immigrant parents.” Such a deviation from the idyllic tropes of Aussie life is not exclusive to the experience of having immigrant parents. It has also been triggered by the housing crisis and the cynicism with which many young Australians view their future prospects. While there is nothing inherently wrong with music that sings about the beach, and “chilling out,” the reality is that such a carefree life is increasingly unavailable to young Sydney-siders, and consequently, there is a growing appetite for something more raw.
It was about five years ago now that I first saw Shady Nasty. I distinctly remember it; it was at the Lansdowne, a classic Inner-West Sydney venue. It was one of the venue’s infamous “graveyard shift” nights, a chance for people to see live music after midnight on a Friday. Believe it or not, this was a rarity in the Sydney nightlife scene—the whole city suffered after lock-out laws were introduced throughout the 2010s to combat alcohol-fuelled violence. As I stood there with my friend Tom, our heads spun as we felt Shady Nasty step onto the stage. We were hit with a whirlwind of guitar tones that we understood as shoegaze mixed with a refreshing intensity on the mic, having more to do with hip-hop than the often-defeated vocal tones of the former. It felt like this excitement was palpable to everyone in the room. Supporting them was Party Dozen, an experimental duo who used drum pads and a saxophone to create long-droning dreamscapes. To this day, Tom and I still agree that this was the most significant live music experience we’ve had in informing our own musical direction and instilling faith in live music in the face of the growing popularity of electronic music.
If you’ve never heard of Shady Nasty, the song “Get Buff” is a great place to start. The aggression in the song is intoxicating and stems from a perceived pressure to succeed. The lyrics, “Tough love, you’re not working hard enough,” reflect the varying attitudes and ideas of success that manifest in different cultures. The lines that follow, “Seeing the dust, I can feel my whole body buck,” reveal the singer’s exhaustion but betray a gumption in the face of it that suggests the will to fulfill these expectations remains. Yet, with the song’s mocking tone and self-awareness of the futile need to succeed according to someone else’s definition, it is no surprise that this is their most listened to song on Spotify. The band has been on the rise since that night I saw them, and I suspect they will continue to grow. Their uncompromising, defiant, and uniquely shoegaze/hip-hop sound is irresistible. They have carved out a space in the Sydney live music scene for innovative music that isn’t too far up its own arse, unafraid to get straight to the point of insecurities and frustrations we all wrestle with.
Josef Wilks is an Australian exchange student in the College of Arts & Science, majoring in Politics and History.
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