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The profile · researched 16 October 2026
Civic Video: from school lunch breaks to a six-track debut and a five-city EP run
A Sydney indie-rock four-piece whose debut EP, Making Room For Others, landed on 7 October 2026 and is now being toured along the east coast with stops in Wollongong, Sydney, Adelaide, Fremantle and Brunswick.
Lunch breaks, then a rhythm section raised on farms
Civic Video started as a habit between two schoolfriends rather than a formed band. Zac Newton-John, who sings and plays rhythm guitar, and drummer Hamish met at high school in Sydney, found common ground in surf-leaning indie rock and played it together during lunch breaks. Happy Mag, writing the band up in 2023, described the pair as high-school misfits who simply kept going after the bell.
The quartet was completed at university, when Newton-John and Hamish recruited two musicians out of regional New South Wales: Belle Whitwell on bass and Riley Maher on lead guitar. Both brought country and blues playing into what had been a city-facing indie-pop and rock outfit, and that mix — coastal indie chords underneath a rhythm section schooled somewhere else entirely — is still the most useful way to describe the records.
The band remains geographically scattered. Speaking to Something You Said on 1 October 2026, the members placed themselves across Wollongong, Kiama, Penrith and Sydney, named Moruya and Cremorne as adopted second homes, and noted that three of the four grew up on farms. The current lineup listed by their booking agency is Newton-John, Whitwell, Maher and Josh Handel, the drummer the band counted as a 2026 arrival.
Letters, Wasted Days, and the radio that picked them up
The first run of singles arrived in 2023. "Letters" and "Wasted Days" came first, followed on 31 July 2023 by "If I Could Make You Dance", the band's third single and the most openly upbeat of the three — an early-2000s indie-rock pastiche built for movement rather than reflection. Those early tracks picked up play on triple j's Home and Hosed as well as community stations 2RRR, 2SSR and Edge Radio in Hobart.
By October 2024 the band had enough traction to be profiled as part of Happy Mag's Needle in the Hay competition, which noted "Letters" had passed 83,000 Spotify streams and compared the band's register to Peach Pit and The Rions. The same piece listed shows alongside Rum Jungle, Heart Shaped Aces and The Rions, and flagged their addition to the Lost Paradise festival bill.
That Lost Paradise appearance, in 2024, is the show their agency still points to as the turning point from support act to a name worth booking on its own. A debut east-coast headline run followed, and the support slots kept accumulating: The Rions, The Vanns, South Summit, Eliza & The Delusionals, Rum Jungle and Daily J all appear on the agency's list.
Three singles, then a six-track debut
The 2026 build-up ran through triple j Unearthed. "Get Back To It" was uploaded on 29 May 2026 and "Say It Out Loud" on 10 August, both picking up Unearthed play and reviews praising sharp, energetic indie rock and what one called a seriously satisfying breakdown. "Terrified" followed on 2 September, made the band's own artist pick, and drew a markedly different read — atmospheric and melancholic, with a reviewer reaching for The Cure as a reference point. The agency counts two triple j Unearthed Track of the Day wins.
Making Room For Others, the debut EP, was released on 7 October 2026. Six tracks, produced and mixed by Rick Austin, whose credits include Charli Lucas, Tenderfoot and Sir Archer. Newton-John has described the record as the product of a specific stretch of time rather than a theme chosen in advance: "I was 21/22 when I was writing it, and I think that age can be a particularly strange place to exist." The title comes from Alan Watts, and Newton-John glosses it as allowing space for something else to grow.
The writing credits the band gives for the sound are Holy Holy and DMA's, with Gang of Youths and Catfish and the Bottlemen in the wider frame. Reviewing the EP for Sounds of Oz on 7 October 2026, Lauren Katulka singled out the snaky bassline on opener "Get Back to It", the guitar and drum intensity of "Say It Out Loud", and the choruses of "Just Like You" and "Daisy", and called the title track epic. Her summary — "one of the most confident and compelling indie-rock recordings I've heard in some time" — came with an observation worth keeping: Newton-John sings in a restrained register that reads as a band record rather than a frontman's vehicle.
Where they stand in October 2026
The numbers their agency publishes are modest and specific: more than one million streams and over 25,000 monthly Spotify listeners, with editorial placements on Spotify's Fresh Finds and Apple Music's New In Rock. New World Artists represents them exclusively, which is the practical reason the current run reaches four states rather than two.
The other measure is ticket sales. The agency states that the band's headline shows across 2026 have all sold out, which places them at the point where the room size, not the demand, is the constraint. The year also took them to Woodford Folk Festival and added a fourth member to the lineup, both of which the band listed when asked to account for 2026.
What has not yet happened is a full-length album, or a date outside Australia. The EP is being treated as the band's first proper statement — their own framing is a debut, five years or so after the first lunch-break rehearsals — and the touring attached to it is a national rollout rather than an international one.
The show on this run
The Making Room For Others tour opened on 2 October 2026 at King Street Hotel in Newcastle and the Old Bar Beach Festival in New South Wales the following night. The headline leg runs 23 October at La La La's in Wollongong, 24 October at Metro Social in Sydney with doors at 7.30pm, and 13 November at the Bergy Bandroom in Brunswick, Melbourne, an 18-plus show with an 8pm start, tickets at $28.05 and special guests not named on the listing. Two festival-adjacent dates sit between them: 30 October in Adelaide, at the Cloisters at UniBar, on The Rions' Halloween Special, and 8 November at Spaced Out at Gage Roads in Fremantle.
The pitch the venues are running is the same one in both Sydney and Melbourne: a four-piece built on honest, heart-on-sleeve songs, playing a show described as intimate and anthemic, and summarised by the Metro listing as the emotion of Holy Holy with the energy of Sam Fender. The band's own description of the set is new songs and old favourites, which given a six-track EP and three years of singles means a programme short enough to be played almost in full.
Setlists from this run have not been published, and no reviews of the individual October shows had appeared at the time of writing. What exists is the recorded evidence and the earlier live write-ups — Happy Mag in 2023 called the stage presence mesmerising and noted audiences on their feet — plus the agency's sold-out claim for the year's headline dates. The rooms are small by design: La La La's, Metro Social and the Bergy Bandroom are all club-scale.
The show, now
The current show is the Making Room For Others EP launch, playing club rooms on the east coast and west: La La La's in Wollongong on 23 October 2026, Metro Social in Sydney on 24 October with doors at 7.30pm, and the Bergy Bandroom in Brunswick on 13 November, an 18-plus show starting at 8pm with tickets at $28.05 and support billed only as special guests. Two non-headline dates sit in between — 30 October at the Cloisters at UniBar in Adelaide on The Rions' Halloween Special, and 8 November at Spaced Out at Gage Roads in Fremantle. The band describes the set as new songs and old favourites, which with a six-track EP and three years of singles behind it means close to the whole catalogue in one sitting; the venue copy promises something intimate and anthemic, and the Metro listing reaches for the emotion of Holy Holy with the energy of Sam Fender. Staging is whatever the room provides — these are bandrooms, not productions. Setlists and reviews from the October dates have not been published; the available live evidence is Happy Mag's 2023 account of a mesmerising stage presence and audiences on their feet, and the agency's statement that every headline show the band played in 2026 sold out.
Researched from yahoo.com · soundsofoz.com · somethingyousaid.com · abc.net.au · newworldartists.net · happymag.tv · happymag.tv · metrotheatre.com.au
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Bidgee · CC BY 3.0
J Bar · CC BY-SA 3.0
Richard001 · Public domain
