Radium Dolls – ‘Wound Up’ album review: A stellar sophomore record from Brisbane’s finest
From the sneering bite of Amyl and The Sniffers to the hazy psychedelia of Tame Impala, Australia has a pretty good track record when it comes to exporting cracking bands – and with their second album Wound Up, Meanjin / Brisbane punk rockers Radium Dolls have passed quality control with flying colours.
The Skinny: With lead singer Will Perkins’ Queenslander twang dripping from every track, Radium Dolls would sound good reading the phone book. It’s part of what makes Wound Up so immediately likeable. “Compliments to the chef” – a refrain repeated across track seven, ‘Hot Heads, Hot Breads’ – wouldn’t sound nearly half as good in less dulcet tones – their music is playful, twanging, pulsing punk rock at its best, which manages to carve out space for itself in an already crowded landscape.
A powerhouse of a band made for sweaty, low-ceiling venues where the walls shake from reverb and smoke machines are used over-zealously, Radium Dolls have become renowned across Australia for their bone-shaking live shows. That frenetic energy is bottled up on this album, but rather than thrashing their way through its eleven tracks, there’s also a brooding, thoughtful, slower undercurrent that bubbles and churns across Wound Up.
Opener ‘Radio’ begins with a moody guitar riff before a sharp drum beat snaps the track into focus: “I’ve got one good eye, one that’s bad, which one are you looking at?” growls singer Perkins. There’s a strange alchemy at work here – something ghostly and magnetic – as the track grabs you by the ankles and drags you, willingly or not, down into the record’s orbit. Track two, ‘Scorching Heat’, leans into guitar-heavy jangliness paired with that sadness-tinged nostalgia the likes of Shame and Fontaines DC have made feel so effortless in recent years.
The record’s real strength, though, lies in its storytelling. On ‘Daddy’, the band take aim at entitlement and hollow nationalism, inspired by real-life scenes of white, flag-waving Jet Ski parades along the Brisbane River. It’s sharp, observational writing delivered with a knowing twinkle in the eye: “Well, daddy ain’t got enough hectares / Heck, there’s barely enough for all of my deck chairs / Hi, I’m Ray, and I’m here to assist,” sings Perkins. Later: “Well, daddy didn’t make a living / By giving anything away now, did he, nah? Hi, I’m Ray, and I get the gist.” It’s my favourite track, perhaps because I love Yard Act, and the fictional Ray reminds me of a young, Aussie version of Graham from ‘Fixer Upper.’
But Wound Up isn’t all sweat and sarcasm. Tracks like ‘Golden Boy’, ‘Moving’, and ‘Favourite’ slow things down, trading chaos for something gentler and more melancholic. It’s in these moments that the band pushes beyond their pub-rock foundations, exploring love, resilience, and the strange emotional gravity of place. “She saw me choked up, dragging our old mattress up the stairs and into nothingness / She lifted the other end / I thought that she was doing fine / But her heart was breaking just like mine was,” sings Perkins on ‘Moving.’
Home – and the contradictions tangled up inside it – sits at the heart of Wound Up. Sun-soaked nostalgia collides with frustration, political tension, and shifting relationships. “I lost some of my best friends to these traps / This town is a snake / It’s no place for a rat,” sings Perkins on ‘Rat Song (For a Film)’, as a warm harmonica drifts across the opening bars. Like standing next to someone with a vicious sunburn, you can feel the heat radiating from this album. On ‘Golden Boy’, it settles into the warm, hazy glow of drawn-out afternoons; on ‘Scorching Heat’, the sun sparks a restless, anything-could-happen sense of optimism, and on ‘Daddy’ and ‘Radio’, those same relentless rays curdle into tension and friction.
Wound Up feels like a scrapbook of life in Brisbane / Meanjin – messy, funny, political, exhausting, hot and human. It’s a record about growing up, staying angry, falling in and out of love, and trying to find solid ground while the world keeps shifting beneath your feet.
The Verdict: The Radium Dolls’ splintering live reputation is well-earned, and it translates on Wound Up. On album number two, the band double down on what makes them distinctive – exquisite storytelling coupled with kick-the-wall-down guitars – but like all the best rock bands, they also understand when to slow down and open up.
Standout track: ‘Daddy’
Release Date: January 30th, 2026 | Producer: Cody McWaters | Label: Radium Dolls
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