Ball Park Music: Exactly How They Are
Whether 2011’s ‘It’s Nice to Be Alive’ was the track that first had you wrapped up in the wonderful world of Ball Park Music, or it was 2025’s ‘Please Don’t Move To Melbourne’ that first exposed you to the joys of the Brisbane based 5-piece, it’s undeniable that after 18 years, the band’s grasp on the Australian public has not dwindled – but sparked up.
Interview Millah Hansberry // Photo supplied
After eight studio albums, countless tours, triple j spins and festival sets, Ball Park Music are still soaring to new heights – in 2025 supporting Oasis, touring Australia and Europe for “36 weekends out of the year,” and releasing their first album to debut at #1 on the ARIA charts, Like Love.
“It was a bit of a surprise,” Dean Hanson, Ball Park Music’s guitarist, chuckled over the phone line on a random Wednesday morning, chatting to The Note. “It’s great to get onto the charts; you pat yourself on the back a little bit. It sort of seems like a theme for our band is kind of punching above our weight a little bit.
“Over the course of our career, I think we had three or four #2 records on debut, and then maybe another one that was #3. I think the closest we got before this record was when INXS had a Best Of album come out, and I think they beat us by 22 copies of the record, which was pretty funny.”
Ball Park Music kicking off the year with a mighty bang feels like the perfect metaphor for how they spent their 2025. But when you take into account that Like Love is their self-confessed calmest, most “low-key” album, that feels like an ironic statement.
Like Love’s 10 tracks, recorded in Sydney’s Golden Retriever Studios with producer Matt Redlich in 10 days, was the groups first return to outsourcing recording and producing duties since their 2014 album Puddinghead. This break was well welcomed by the band, Dean mused, explaining that “getting our heads completely in the music and relying on our ears and what we were hearing [was] awesome.”
From track one through to 10, the album presents a journey of harmony, pain, introspection, love and loss, wrapped up in a blanket of profound acceptance of the human condition. From ‘Coast is Clear’ and ‘Overwhelming Sound’, frontman Sam Cromack narrates the feeling of guilt from being distracted and disconnected to the important relationships around us. Then tracks like ‘As Far As I Can Tell’, ‘Like Love’, ‘NORK’ and ‘Fast Forward’, present themselves as imperfect and wholeheartedly human love songs.
A profound amount of emotional depth seeps out of the pores of the record, anchored with a steady beat and harnessed through layers and layers of angelic harmonies. Performed live in theatres across the country, the album brought audiences from all ages together, for a night of shared experience, wicked riffs and stunning harmonies.
“It was good to do the Australian theatre tour earlier this year,” Dean explains. “It was just a little bit more focused, you know? In these beautiful rooms, the songs sounded lovely. Stripping things back and playing those lush arrangements was really, really nice.”
It was at Hindley Street Music Hall where they took Like Love to Adelaide, with hundreds of friends, lovers, parents, and an overwhelming number of teenagers (who would have been babies when their first records dropped), dancing under the glistening chandelier.
“Sometimes we have people coming to our shows who have recently turned 18 and they’re like, ‘oh, my parents listened to you guys when I was a kid’, which is wild.
“It definitely makes you take a step back and think like, yeah, our first record was 15 years ago, and we’d been a band three before that. So, if you’d come to see us at our first ever show and you had a baby the next week, that child would now be 18 and able to come to a Ball Park show in a pub. It’s really crazy for us to hear that.”
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Back on their road to success, in late 2025, the five-piece were offered the experience of a lifetime, supporting Oasis on their ‘Live ’25’ Australian tour. These five sold-out stadium shows launched the Brissy group in front of the eyes of more than 320,000 people, and marked their monumental 600th show as a band (the stat counted by Ball Park Music’s keyboardist/expert hobby statistician Paul Furness). And the group relished in every moment of it.
“It was so intense. It was wild. Just the scale of seeing how an event like that gets put together is incredible. Walking out on stage to see a sea of people like that is something you sort of never,” he pauses for a moment, “I don’t think you can prepare yourself for that, unless you are Oasis, of course, and you do it every night.”
The feat brought newfound attention to the band, with a massive amount of support, but not without some criticism from rowdy Oasis fans who viewed the band as their number one barrier from seeing the Manchester brothers rock out on stage.
“There was a really funny post actually – I think my brother saw it. He just opened Facebook and there was a picture someone had taken of themselves giving us the rude finger while we’re on stage,” Dean chuckled earnestly. “It just said ‘Anyone else feel like this at the Oasis show?’, which is pretty hilarious, actually. Fair play to that person.”
This good humour and a steady rock ‘n’ roll attitude is what the band are channelling while moving onto their upcoming ‘The Rock ’n’ Roll Adventure Continues…’ Australian tour in early 2026. It’s high-energy picks like Dean’s favourite Ball Park Music track ‘Struggle Street’ off their third album Puddinghead that will be shining front and centre in these shows.
Heading over to Adelaide on February 28 for A Day in the Gully festival, jam-packed with the star-studded lineup of Ball Park Music, The Living End, Chet Faker, Mallrat, Pete Murray, Teenage Joans and The Tullamarines, Dean summed it up perfectly, “It’s just going to be a good day.”
“We had the Tullamarines support us at our Adelaide show last year. They’re awesome – massive fingers crossed for a potential Hottest 100 entry from them this year. Teenage Joans supported us a few years ago on our Weirder and Weirder album tour, and they’re incredible. The whole lineup itself is just awesome. There is not a single artist on there that I’m not looking forward to seeing.”
As for their set, audiences can expect nothing but feel-good energy. “We’ll keep it pretty rock and roll,” Dean explains, as the new year marks the closing of the Like Love album campaign. “We’ll be celebrating and putting every bit of effort we’ve got into live shows, and then going off to make another record.”
And this new record? “I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say we’ll definitely be releasing another record at some point,” Dean admits with a sweetness to his voice. “After our tour in June, we’ll knuckle down, get into the studio and yeah, see what we can make.”
After a major year that most Australian acts could only dream of experiencing, Dean admits that after everything, it’s the future that he finds most exciting.
“We’re always looking ahead. We’re always thinking that we can one-up ourselves on, you know, where we’ve gotten to,” the guitarist’s voice shines with a starry-eyed quality down the phone line. “Now that we’ve had a #1 record and supported Oasis and all this other stuff, we’re gonna have to work extra hard to one-up what we did last year.
“Yeah, God, what is next? I’m just excited for whatever the challenges may be.”
Catch Ball Park Music playing at A Day in the Gully Festival, alongside acts like The Living End, Chet Faker, Mallrat and more on Saturday 28 February. Tickets on sale now at adayinthegully.com.au.
