Great Gable

Great Gable grew out of Bunbury house parties and WAAPA rehearsal rooms into a band that now feels baked into the national indie circuit. Four mates turned lifers: Alex Whiteman up front, Matt Preen on guitar, Chris Bye on bass and Madi Hanley on drums, now based in Perth but very much carrying that South West DNA around with them.

They come from a pretty specific lane: early 2000s NYC rock in the guitars, UK indie in the swing, all filtered through a warm, coastal looseness that keeps the songs from feeling precious. Their own bio talks about hooks, heart and feel-good energy, which is basically what they have built a fanbase on, whether that is Triple J kids or the crowd pressed up against the barrier at a regional pub.

The run-up to that has been long. EPs like GG, Modern Interactions and Lazy Bones Tapes set the template: jangly but tight, rhythm section doing real work, Alex singing like he is telling you something over the kitchen bench rather than into a void. By the time they hit their debut album Tracing Faces in 2020, the band had already outgrown the Bunbury bars and were headlining rooms around Australia and New Zealand, with singles like All My Friends and Blur sitting comfortably on Triple J rotation and the record sliding into the ARIA charts.

The touring story matters with these guys. They have felt out their sound in real rooms: Groovin the Moo, Falls, SOTA, Outfield, plus supports for Ocean Alley, The Jungle Giants, Thelma Plum, The Jezabels and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. That constant movement is why the songs land live the way they do. The band lean into groove and pocket, not just chorus fireworks, which is also why live photos of them always look like a crew mid-sweat rather than mid-posed moment.

Around 2021 they locked in with Matt Corby and Alex Henriksson’s Rainbow Valley world, signing with the label and setting up camp at the studio that sits behind it. That link up shifted the palette: Hazy, Another Day and then Our Lovecame out of that era, all carrying a slightly deeper low end and a more patient sense of space without losing the sunburnt feel that people had turned up for in the first place. Our Love, produced by Corby and Henriksson, is the soft-focus side of the band, written about waking up to morning light cutting across the person in your bed and letting that moment be enough.

Another Day sits closer to the classic Great Gable lane: a strolling rhythm, guitars that bounce rather than bite, and Alex sounding equal parts restless and laid back as he sings about being stuck in the house, wanting out, wanting the clouds instead of four walls. Released right at the front of summer, local press were quick to peg it as a backyard soundtrack single, and they were right. It is the type of song that feels built for outdoor nights where the band is half-shadow, half-stage lights and the whole crowd leans in on the last chorus.

They have kept pushing since then. Tours across the country and overseas, a reputation as a reliable live draw, and a new chapter with the 2024 album Small Fry, again tied to Rainbow Valley, which pulls more from the records they namecheck as touchstones: Beatles, Arctic Monkeys, BadBadNotGood, Nate Smith. Even offstage they treat the project like more than just their own bubble, cutting in work with CanTeen and the FEAT solar initiative, skimming ticket sales into causes that sit outside their immediate world.

On Mood on the Roof, Our Love and Another Day show the band in that sweet pocket where indie guitars, Rainbow Valley polish and WA looseness all meet. It is that rare thing: a rock band that still feels like your mates, even when the songs are big enough to carry across a city skyline.