Sounds Of The Suburbs and Yours & Owls are two Aussie music festivals that have managed to procure some pretty awesome bands between them. However, it looks as though there might be a war emerging between the two festivals, with the both of them taking to social media to fan the flames of discontent.
With Sounds Of The Suburbs set to hit up Sydney’s Sutherland Shire on September 3rd, and Yours & Owls set to take place in Wollongong on September 30th and October 1st, it might not seem like the festivals are in direct competition with each other, but a closer look at the festivals’ Facebook pages seems to indicate that there’s some bad blood between the two.
The first indication of trouble seemed to come to light on June 14th, when Aaron Girgis, founder of Sounds Of The Suburbs, posted an Instagram video which featured a recent issue of The Brag with a Yours & Owls cover story being burned. “Sounds Of The Suburbs news coming soon,” the post read. “Yours & Owls keep ya mags out of Cronulla.”
From there, it all seemed nice and quiet until July 6th, when Sounds Of The Suburbs took to Facebook to ask a question to Yours & Owls. “Hey whats the address of your office,” the post began. “So we can sort a SOUNDS OF THE SUBURBS billboard out the front of it.” Ouch.
Only a few days later, Yours & Owls responded with an Instagram post aimed at Sounds Of The Suburbs. Featuring a picture of a post with both a ripped Yours & Owls poster, and a poster for another of their events, Last Frost, their post read: “A couple of posters to a couple of events that are both way better than Sounds Of The Suburbs.”
Not long after, Sounds Of The Suburbs responded. “We might donate a small % of our sales to help you guys get glasses,” they said. “You realises your posters are ripped don’t you?” Not ones to hold back, Yours & Owls hit back with a classic “Yeh that top ones about as ripped as the people who buy Sounds Of The Suburbs tickets will be.”
The same day, another Facebook post was made which featured someone from the Yours & Owls team taking another shot at Sounds Of The Suburbs. “They might be the younger adopted step-cousin of Yours & Owls we try not associate with at Christmas,” the post began. “But they got Camp Cope & Jess Locke playing in sutho (sic) and that’s pretty cool wit (sic) me. Grab a tikko (sic) if you can, they’ve asked us for all the help they can get.”
Soon enough, Sounds Of The Suburbs responded with “We love how hard you work. If you ever want a job paying more then minimum wage hit us up always a place for you here!” This of course resulted in another response from Yours & Owls in which they simply said “Paying your bands in beer & sausage sizzle doesn’t count as ‘above minimum wage.”
Now, a few days since the last exchange, another incident has arisen, with Sounds Of The Suburbs sharing an image of a defaced Yours & Owls sign, saying “Couldn’t have happened to a nice festival,” before tagging Yours & Owls’ Facebook page.
At the end of the day though, there’s a solid chance that this whole back and forth is just in good fun. After all, Sounds Of The Suburbs’ founder, Aaron Girgis, also manages Skegss (who played at Yours & Owls last year), and Ruby Fields (who is set to play Yours & Owls this year). So it looks like this could just be a friendly rivalry between the two.
We reached out to Sounds Of The Suburbs, though they refused to comment. Upon reaching out to Yours & Owls, they simply asked “What’s Sounds of the Suburbs?” We’ll be sure to keep you updated as any further information comes forward.
