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For many, summer in Australia means taking a well-earned break and diving in to the myriad of festivals taking place all around the country.
Camping festivals start popping up around New Years Eve, designed for those who don't mind getting dirty and going without showering for a few days.
Multi-day festivals can last a couple of weeks and bring the best and most weird and wonderful acts from all corners of the globe.
And then there's the one-day city festivals for those with a short attention span, who like their good times in short bursts.
Here's just a small taste of what's coming up over the next few months.
Falls Festival
Falls Music & Arts Festival is one of the biggest festivals of the year and the music line-up rarely disappoints.
Falls was born in Lorne, off Victoria's Great Ocean Road and in 2018 is celebrating its silver anniversary.
Where? Lorne (VIC), Marion Bay (TAS), Byron Bay (NSW), Fremantle (WA).
When? Various dates between December 28 and January 7.
What should I see?
If you're after some Aussie rock, check out power duo Polish Club, a last minute addition to the Lorne line up.
For lots of guitars and Australian accents you need The Smith Street Band and Brisbane trio Dune Rats, who have been known to put on a wild show. (Just to give you an idea, Dune Rats' Splendour in the Grass set involved giant blow up tinnies, dirt bikes, confetti balls and Shannon Noll.)
When you want to turn it down a notch, lay back to the oozing vocals and soft melodies of Methyl Ethel, Julia Jacklin, and Angus and Julia Stone.
For a hearty dose of nostalgia, former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher will be dishing out some Britpop classics, along with some Noel Gallagher-themed insults.
Falls debutante and recently ARIA-Hall-of-Fame-anointed Daryl Braithwaite, along with rockers Grinspoon — who first appeared at Falls in 1997 — will both be there to take you back to the simpler times of dial-up internet and predictive texting.
When you're ready to dance all the dirt away, head to Peking Duck, ex-triple j host Nina Las Vegas, or headliner Flume — although get in early, as his sets tend to get flooded.
Woodford Folk Festival
Starting out as a humble folk festival in Maleny, Queensland in the 80s, Woodford has now expanded to include an almost overwhelming choice of music, dance, masterclasses, arts and crafts, and attracts thousands of people each year.
It's also family friendly and is packed full with concerts and workshops tailored for kids. It's free for kids under five years of age, and pretty cheap for those under 18.
The festival also hosts some events interpreted into Auslan. You can find them by looking for the 'interpreted' symbol in the guide.
Where? About an hour north of Brisbane, on a huge piece of land in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.
When? December 27-January 1
What should I see?
Eleanor McEvoy is one of Ireland's great singer songwriters who'll do anything from Chuck Berry to Christy Moore. She's bringing her Thomas Moore Project to Woodford this year, giving sentimental Irish songs from the great poet an astringent makeover.
From the folk pages of the thick Woodford programme-slash-bible, put a fat circle around Mosky's Mountain Drifters, Kristina Olsen, Bush Gothic and Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill.
The Turner Brown Band (featuring Nikki D Brown & Dom Turner) will cook up some gospel-inflected "Sacred Steel", music which came out of the Pentecostal Church in 1930s Ohio, where steel guitars became the church organ.
From Kenya comes bright spark Maia von Lekow. She's a captivating live performer and sings in both English and Kiswahili. Her music swims in jazz, folk, Afro polyrhythms, and reggae. She'll be performing her latest album Maia & The Big Sky, in which she also explores her Mijikenda roots, an ethnic group native to Kenya.
If you're looking to get keep busy, there are a host of workshops during the festival for you to choose from, such as spoon-carving, upcycled book-binding and marionette-making. Also recommended are the Australian bush songs masterclass and 3D printing workshop.
Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival is a reflection of the harbour city in summer — with a diverse music program that always treads a fine line between art and politics.
It's playwright Wesley Enoch's second year as artistic director. He refers to the event as the city's cultural New Year's resolution.
Where? Various venues around Sydney.
When? January 6-28.
What should I see?
If you only have time for one show this summer, make it the Mission Songs Project — 1957 Palm Island Strike.
Musician Jessie Lloyd has travelled Australia far and wide to speak to elders, songmen and songwomen to research, uncover and preserve Indigenous folk songs.
Lloyd will be sharing stories and performing songs by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons who were forcibly relocated to Christian missions and reserves between 1900–1999.
Growing up under the regime of then Tunisian president Ben Ali, singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi found her voice to a backdrop of brewing revolt — her music went on to become a rallying cry and soundtrack for protestors during the Arab Spring protests across North Africa and the Middle East.
Mathlouthi's folk roots and influences are worth noting also: a heady mix of Marcel Khalif, Joan Baez, Iman Sheik and Bob Dylan.
When Jlin aka Jerrilyn Patton found out her first LP had topped Best Album lists in 2015, she was still working at a steel mill in her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Fast forward to 2017 and her second LP Black Origami represents the future of experimental electronic music, with an electric mix of collaborators from avant-garde composer William Basinski to South African hip-hop artist Dope Saint Jude
After doing the rounds at film festivals around the world, experimental documentary The Bomb finally reaches Australian shores. It's a hypnotic observation on the legacy of humanity's compulsion to weaponise, and is powerfully scored (live!) by the minimalist electronics of supergroup The Acid. Co-directed by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshar and author Eric Schlosser, The Bomb is a montage of bleak, disturbing and mesmerizing visuals that centre around the history of the atomic bomb, militarisation, power and the devastating effects of war.
For those who love complexity at its most minimal, the celestial sound of Estonian Grammy-winning choral group Vox Clamantis (meaning 'the voice of one crying out' in Latin) will pay homage to a selection of Arvo Part's masterworks inside the towering Cove Apartments in The Rocks. It's part of the Seidler Salon Series.
Mona Foma
Curated by Violent Femmes bassist and Tasmanian resident Brian Ritchie, the Museum of Old and New Art's Festival Of Music and Art — Mona Foma for short, and Mofo for the seriously time-challenged — is heading into its tenth year.
But the 2018 edition will be the last time the festival is held in Hobart before MONA owner David Walsh moves it permanently to Launceston, on the other side of the Apple Isle.
It's hoped the "Mona-effect" could help boost Launceston's economy.
Where? Various venues around Launceston and Hobart.
When? January 12-14 in Launceston, January 15-22 in Hobart.
What should I see?
New York-based Wally De Backer (Gotye) is one of the major drawcards of this year's festival. He's bringing his Ondioline Orchestra to Tasmania to perform a tribute to synth-pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey. What exactly is an Odioline you may ask? It's a type of vacuum-tube electronic keyboard that preceded the synthesizer. De Backer owns about ten of them, and has declared it his favourite electronic instrument.
Musician and composer Rahim AlHaj escaped from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991 only to have his beloved oud confiscated at the border. For Rahim, the oud is his connection between past and present and what he calls his musical storyteller.
Along with Iraqi cellist and conductor Karim Wasfi, they are performing together for the first time, drawing on their knowledge of traditional Iraqi music, Arabic classical styles and Western classical music.
And then there's post-rock provocateurs Godspeed You! Black Emperor, for whom all music is political, and they don't need a singer to prove it. The electronic collective formed in Montreal in the early 90s and are bringing their instrumental soundscapes to Mofo for a standalone concert, plus a collaboration with Canadian contemporary dance company Holy Body Tattoo.
Sydney City Limits
This summer, Sydney will be blessed with a brand new music festival.
It's called Sydney City Limits, and is sister to the legendary Texan fest Austin City Limits — itself a spin-off of a live music TV show.
The inaugural one-day gig will take place in Centennial Park, and you can bring along your young 'uns for the bite-sized "festival within the festival", aptly titled Sydney Kiddie Limits.
Where? Centennial Park, Sydney.
When? February 24, from 11am.
What should I see?
There are a few long overdue acts headlining this fest. Beck and French duo Justice who are here for the first time since 2012.
English rock band The Libertines will be stepping on to Australian soil for the first time ever.
Also check out genre-defying bassist Thundercat, who is part of the generation of artists, like Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington, that have deep roots in jazz and have brought the legacy of the genre into the present.
Others to wrap your ears around are Gang of Youths and Winston Surfshirt, who have both had absolutely stellar years in 2017 and put on impressive live shows.
And, of course, the all-time great Grace Jones. At almost 70 years of age, she remains an absolute powerhouse.
Perth Festival
The oldest cultural festival in Australia is turning 65 in 2018.
It runs for almost 3.5 weeks and around a third of the 230-odd music, dance, film, theatre, and art events will be free.
It all starts with the ritual "Siren Song", of around seven minutes, featuring female voices that will echo around the city. The Siren Song will take place at dawn and dusk every day for the first ten days of the festival.
Where? Various venues around Perth.
When? February 9-March 4.
What should I see?
There isn't any place better to see live music than the Chevron Garden Stage at Perth Festival. It's a chilled, feel-good affair with plenty of room to dance and just sit back and enjoy the balmy summer night.
With a back-catalogue spanning nearly half a century, soul and funk veteran Lee Fields will be spreading the love, and meditating on issues of today, with American rhythm and blues band The Expressions.
If you're looking to be lost in a krautrock cacophony of sound, then look no further than the visceral power and sonic onslaught of Scottish instrumental post-rockers Mogwai.
Electric Fields and Kardajala Kirridarra both infuse language, tradition and stories from the Northern Territory, and in their own distinct way, fuse raw and soulful vocals with electronics.
At the Government House Ballroom there will also be a celebration of the great French composer Claude Debussy, as 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of his death. Debussy used influences from the far east, Russia, Spain and northern Africa and broke many of the rules of Western classical music in his piano harmonies. French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet will be presenting a comprehensive musical portrait of nearly all Debussy's works for piano in an Australian exclusive.
Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, music-education, events, carnivals-and-festivals, australia
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