There’s no such thing as a supergroup in Melbourne. It’s a city where it’s commonplace for musicians to play in multiple bands. Besides fostering camaraderie, familiar faces are often seen making up different configurations with other familiar faces, and this helps tease out new dynamic contrasts in sound and personality.
Perhaps this is why, in the case of Season 2, there might be between three and five people singing on any given song. The quintet coalesced in 2024, when keyboardist Claudia Serfaty (The Stroppies) and guitarist Freya McLeod (Phil & The Tiles) began jamming after repeatedly running into each other socially. After locking in Carolyn Hawkins (Parsnip, School Damage) on drums, McLeod invited her Phil & The Tiles bandmate Charlotte Zarb along on bass. Once fellow Tiles alumnus Matt Powell joined on second guitar, the friendly formulation was complete.
“We’ve all known each other for years, but we’ve never played together,” explains Zarb over a round of drinks at The Curtin in the inner-north suburb of Carlton. Later on, Season 2 will play their first-ever main support slot – sandwiched between openers Techno 666 and headliners EXEK, who are launching their seventh album to a sold-out room. Season 2’s unfussy fusion of serrated post punk and lilting jangle pop proves to be a perfect fit on the bill.
One reason why so many players multi-task in Melbourne is that it seems like one band member is always having a baby, heading overseas or experiencing some other life change, pausing that particular band for months or years. It was simpler than that for Phil & The Tiles: after releasing their 2024 album Double Happiness, that group gradually began doing less, leaving a natural vacuum for three members to drift over to the Season 2 camp.
“We got lazy about practising and playing,” Zarb admits. “And when that happens, that’s the end of the band. That happened in my previous band too, The Snakes.”
Phil & The Tiles had been McLeod’s first band; she joined partway through and was still learning guitar. Since she was playing parts written by the previous guitarist, it was a nice training-wheels situation. By contrast, she’s writing songs and her own guitar parts in Season 2, as well as sharing the bulk of lead vocals with Serfaty.
“It’s my first time ever collaborating,” says McLeod, who joined Zarb for the pre-gig interview. “It’s amazing what you come up with. It’s something that you couldn’t have made by yourself.”
Rather than talk about what this new band might sound like, the five members started by addressing who would play which role. McLeod wanted to sing for the first time, and Serfaty took up keyboards after playing bass in The Stroppies. Powell graduated from bass in Phil & The Tiles to guitar here, and Zarb swapped from keyboards in Phil & The Tiles to bass here. Meanwhile, Hawkins has played keyboards in School Damage and drums in Parsnip; here she returns to drums, providing the group’s glue via both the rhythms and the vocal harmonising.
Those gang vocals are key to Season 2’s debut album, Power Of Now. Sometimes multiple members chime in freely, and sometimes the vocals come in unison. On lead single ‘Abundance Of Power’, McLeod and Serfaty’s call-and-response exchanges meet up for certain lines, while ‘Nothing Affair’ sees McLeod provide a deadpan counterpoint to Serfaty’s chirpier lead. And against the groggy jangle of ‘Becomes a Dream’, layered vocals come in and out with breezy affability.
It’s a short, spontaneous outing, with only two songs passing the three-minute mark. Yet there are plenty of enchanting details, like the buzzing new wave edge to opener ‘What For’ (think early Go-Go’s) and the scrappy garage verve of ‘Videos Are Gone’. ‘Holiday’ captures the band’s signature balance of springy momentum and melancholy undertow, even as the slower and more heartfelt ‘Tugging At The Cable’ recalls cult-classic Love Is All ballads, such as ‘Turn The Radio Off’.
As for balancing punky and poppy impulses so well, it came quite naturally to Season 2. “Everyone just writes songs,” demurs Zarb.
“For a while I was wondering what the sound even was,” McLeod admits. “Because we didn’t know what we would all like.”
The solution? Keep it loose. Each member might bring a part or multiple parts; Powell brings the jangly stuff and Serfaty and McLeod lean towards post punk. Serfaty often arrives with keyboard lines, as well as lyrics and vocals, and Zarb comes up with fun bass lines to keep things interesting for her and listeners alike. But nothing is overworked: even the band name was a low-stakes placeholder that simply stuck.
McLeod groups many of her lyrical contributions to the band around themes of “memory, self-expression and slogans,” with the album title definitely fitting the latter category. ‘Videos Are Gone’ was inspired by her accidentally deleting all the videos on her computer, and ‘Abundance Of Power’ was the first song she ever wrote from start to finish. “It was at a very sad time in my life,” she reveals, “and I just wrote a song about it. I sent it to the band really reluctantly.”
Season 2’s debut gig was at The Gem, a small bar in nearby Collingwood. It was so hot that night that Zarb got someone to spray deodorant on her hands to make them less sweaty and slippery while playing bass. McLeod describes the first few gigs as scary: “I didn’t really know how to do anything. I had to learn how to sing and play guitar at the same time, and I was shy.”
Power Of Now was recorded almost entirely in a single weekend, with all the instruments done the first day and then overdubs and vocals the second. A few things were added on a third day, but that’s it. Season 2 made the record with The Green Child’s Alex Macfarlane at a space run by his bandmate Mickey Young (also of Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Total Control and many other bands).
“It’s probably the most unfussed thing I’ve ever done in my life,” says McLeod, comparing it to her time-intensive work in visual art, film and fashion design. She painted the album cover as well.
“I think it was intentional to do it in one weekend,” Zarb adds. “Because every time I’ve recorded, there’s the risk of overworking something. You know the songs … how much time do you need?”
Macfarlane mixed the album as well, adding flute that follows McLeod’s guitar line on ‘In The Pits’ and a metal can rolling in the background of closer ‘And Again’. “He has a lot of sound effects,” says McLeod. “He was like, ‘When people record with me, you’ll get hidden things.’ It’s like a special treat.”
“I think he said, ‘I can really picture a can on this song,’” recalls Zarb. “And we were like, ‘Totally. Go for it.’ It really needs the can. We don’t have that live though, unfortunately.” “We could,” adds McLeod playfully.
Can or no can, Season 2 are planning to pack in a lot more live shows this year, starting with a slot at Nag Nag Nag Fest in Sydney. With Power Of Now coming out in the UK and Europe via London label and show promoters Upset The Rhythm, there’s even the possibility of overseas touring. After all, Serfaty is originally from London and her other band, The Stroppies, have released several albums on London label Tough Love. But nothing has been confirmed just yet.
“It’s Melbourne: everyone is a musician and everyone has a full-time job,” Zarb says bluntly. “So it really depends on what time we can get away and how much we can afford.”
For now, the band are gearing up for a hometown album launch in late May, with plans to offer tarot readings and sell a signature cocktail, fortune cookies, football jerseys and other offbeat merch. They’re also working on a top-secret cover song for their set. After that, they fantasise about going away together for a team-building “Season 2 winter retreat”, complete with trust falls and communal pizza making.
Either way, songwriting for a second album should begin in earnest after the launch gig. In typical Season 2 fashion, they’re not planning to overthink it too much. “We’ve talked about talking about where to take it,” quips Zarb.
Power of Now comes April 24 through Upset The Rhythm and Spoilsport Records
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