Review: Bowling for Soup + Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls @ Hindley Street Music Hall 09/05/26

It was a night not to be missed when Texan pop punk outfit Bowling for Soup and UK folk punk act Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls turned Hindley Street Music Hall into a heaving mass of sweaty, singing bodies.

Words Ella Bruce // Images Shaun Wilkinson

Bowling for Soup + Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls w/Talk heavy @ Hindley Street Music Hall 09/05/26

Saturday night. Pop punk royalty. Double header at Hindley Street Music Hall… need I say more? For the first time ever, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls teamed up with Bowling For Soup for a huge co-headlining tour, Bowl My Bones, across Australia.

Opening the massive concert was the explosive, playful, high-energy Talk Heavy. One would be surprised to find out the band were from Brisbane, because singer Matt Cochran had the perfect pop punk American accent while he sang, quickly switching it out for some Aussie slang when the singing was over.

The band started with Midwest emo vibes, playing the opening riff of their song ‘Something Cool’, which quickly caught the crowd’s attention. They picked up the pace with ‘The Montreal Screwjob’ and ‘Die For You’, which sounded like it was straight out of a 2000’s alt rom-com movie.

Talk Heavy are ones to catch next time they’re around. They left us wanting more, even teasing a new album set to come out early next year.

The openers set definitely warmed up a keen crowd, which ended up being very necessary when Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls took the stage, because they gave everyone a workout.

Turner ran onto the stage, immediately bursting into song with ‘I Still Believe’. It took the audience no time to respond with pointing and singing along, and you could quickly see that everyone in the room was an adoring fan of the folk/punk singer from England.

He backed that up with ‘Try This at Home’ and ‘Never Mind the Back Problems’, playing faster than anyone in the crowd could keep up headbanging along to without their head falling off and rolling onto the floor in front of them. Strumming away on his acoustic guitar – which Turner later assured us he was only going to use for good not evil (“unlike Ed Sheeran”), the folk influence rang strong through each song, each track reminiscent of an old-fashioned bar sing-a-long.

For his next song, “Photosynthesis”, one of Turner’s most recognisable songs, he ordered the crowd into a circle pit, and they willingly obeyed. But that was only one of many moments he shared with the crowd.

Turner also encouraged the crowd to be as loud as possible while doing his only guitar solos for the night, because he self-proclaimed himself as a terrible soloist – going as far as sharing they “almost cancelled the rest of the tour” after his performance in Brisbane earlier this month.

Halfway through the set, The Sleeping Souls left the stage, leaving just Turner and his acoustic guitar, where he shared stories of his and NOFX’s collaboration for split album West Coast Vs. Wessex, where they covered five of each other’s songs.

He joked that shortly after the album was released in 2020, NOFX called it quits, so now all their songs “belong to him”, leading into his cover of “Bob”, fusing Turner’s folk influences with the iconic punk song.

The band left on a high note with the walls of the venue shaking and everyone jumping for their last song of the night, “Four Simple Words”.

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Next up, co-headliners of the night, Bowling For Soup, rolled onto stage to the sound of their theme song in coordinated matching outfits. Sporting long teal shorts, sneakers and their “starry eye skull” shirt, which was also available at the merch stand, Bowling For Soup made quite the entrance.

Starting off strong with the opening song from their 2004 album A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, the band played ‘Almost’, getting the crowd pumped for their stacked setlist.

They blasted through their most popular songs for fans gathered at Hindley Street Music Hall, playing ‘High School Never Ends’, ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’ and of course, their famous cover of Fountains of Wayne’s ‘Stacy’s Mom’.

Their set was filled with gimmicky jokes and high school humour, even a conversation about circumcision that went on for longer than I care to admit. They praised their hometown Texas, leading into their song ‘Ohio (Come Back to Texas’ where they brought back openers, Talk Heavy, to finish off the song with them.

They also had a “photo opportunity” moment with Frank Turner during their song ‘Punk Rock 101’, where they paused the music, pressed play on ‘Photograph’ by Nickelback, the song booming over the speakers as they posed around the stage for pictures together.

Frontman Jaret Reddick reflected that the last time they were in Adelaide was for the epic Soundwave festival in 2014, where their backstage rooms were in the Adelaide Gaol, adjacent to Bonython Park. He was stoked by the outcome of concert goers for the night, especially when he found out how much tickets were, “100 bucks?!” he said, “That’s bullshit.”

Reddick also took a moment to have a serious word about mental health and the importance of speaking up if you need help. He shared his own struggles with the audience about seeking support for his anxiety and depression, before playing his heartfelt acoustic song ‘Turbulence’.

Bowling for Soup picked the pace back up with hits ‘Two-Seater’ and ‘Trucker Hat’, before playing their final song for the night, a cover of SR-71’s ‘1985’. The voices of hundreds of fans screaming the lyrics of the iconic song echoed through the venue. It was the loudest the audience had been all night and brought to a close one hell of an evening of live music.

Want more pics of the gig? Check out our full photo gallery here.