JETLAG | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW
There's something exciting about watching a young band figure out who they are before the rest of the world has had a chance to tell them who they should be. For Newcastle's Jetlag, that journey is already well underway. Still navigating high school, the teenage rock outfit has found itself performing at venues and festivals across the region, winning Bandwidth in November 2025 and stepping into the recording studio for the very first time. It's a remarkable start, but what stands out most is how little interest they have in getting ahead of themselves. They're making music, playing shows and enjoying the experience of building something together.
Their debut single, Sight for Sore Eyes, captures that youthful energy while offering a glimpse into a band beginning to develop its own identity. Drawing inspiration from Silverchair, Violent Soho, Queens of the Stone Age and the enduring spirit of Australian pub rock, Jetlag are conscious of Newcastle's musical history without wanting to be defined by it. Winning Bandwidth gave them the opportunity to work with producer Mitta Norath and filmmaker Joel Black, with the accompanying music video filmed inside the abandoned Argyle House, a venue with its own place in the city's rock history. For a group of teenagers recording their first original material, it's the kind of experience that makes everything suddenly feel a little more real.
But beneath the excitement of festival stages, studio sessions and their first release, Jetlag are still a group of mates discovering what it means to be a band. They're learning how to translate the energy of their live performances into recordings, how to connect with audiences who have never heard their songs and how to balance their growing ambitions with the ordinary experiences of being teenagers. We caught up with Jetlag to talk about finding their feet in Newcastle's music scene, the making of Sight for Sore Eyes, the lessons they've learned along the way and why, regardless of where the music takes them, having fun together remains at the heart of it all.
TRACK REVIEW - Sight for Sore Eyes
Jetlag waste absolutely no time making an impression with Sight for Sore Eyes. A seriously tough guitar riff kicks things off, accompanied by that unmistakable screech of guitar feedback before the rest of the band comes crashing in. It's raw, gritty and full of attitude, immediately establishing the kind of energy you'd expect from a band raised on the heavier side of Australian rock. As the verse settles in, the driving bass and drums keep everything charging forward, creating a relentless momentum that makes it impossible not to get caught up in the track.
What really impressed us, though, is how distinctive the chorus feels. In this style of guitar-driven rock, it can be surprisingly difficult to give a chorus its own identity without sacrificing the intensity of the verses, but Jetlag have absolutely nailed that balance. You know exactly when the chorus hits, and it feels like a genuine payoff rather than simply another section of the song. The vocal harmonies are particularly impressive, adding another dimension to the arrangement and giving the chorus the melodic lift it deserves. It's clear that considerable thought has gone into making every section feel purposeful.
The production deserves plenty of credit, too. There's enough grit to preserve the band's youthful energy, but also a level of clarity that allows the individual elements to shine. From the opening feedback to the final moments, Sight for Sore Eyes kept us thoroughly engaged. For a band still in their teenage years, there's an impressive understanding of dynamics, arrangement and how to make a rock song genuinely memorable. Jetlag aren't simply throwing distortion at the wall and hoping something sticks. They're already showing the songwriting instincts that could take them a long way.
Winning Bandwidth in November 2025 unlocked studio time with Mitta Norath and a music video with Joel Black. Once the prize was real and the pressure of ‘what do we do with this’ set in, what was the first decision you made as a band about how you wanted to use it?
I think it was more a sense of excitement than pressure. We decided to record two of our originals rather than just one. It was a good opportunity to throw ourselves into studio work and obviously get our music out there. It was our first experience in a studio and got our heads around production and the elements involved in recording a song. It was great to get a taste of it, especially with someone as skilled as Mitta. Given we won Bandwith, we knew Mitta liked our music and energy, which gave us confidence..
Newcastle has one of the most famous teenage grunge stories in Australian music. When your name gets mentioned alongside that legacy, does it feel like a compliment, a comparison you have to live up to, or something you’re deliberately trying to move past?
Of course it’s nice to be mentioned in the same sentence as Silverchair. It's not about moving past it because we never were Silverchair and we never will be Silverchair. It can be a compliment, but we don't want to be compared to them all the time. That's hard in the Newcastle rock scene, especially being a teenage high school band. We are trying to tread our own path.
Filming the music video inside the old Argyle House is a genuine act of respect for the city’s music history. Whose idea was it to put your first single in a room that Frenzal Rhomb, The Screaming Jets and NOFX have all played, and did being in that space actually change how you performed?
We all thought it would be a cool place to film a video. It’s closed and is a demolition sight so we got to set up the room how we wanted it. We liked the vibe of an abandoned building, which really fit in well with the video. I didn't think we really realised the history behind the venue until we were actually playing there. . It probably hit us after we finished who had played there previously.
“Sight for Sore Eyes”flips a phrase most people use to mean pure relief and turns it into a warning. What made you go looking for the darker version of a saying like that, and did the twist come first or the song around it?
We actually wrote the riffs and the music first. Iit was a bit darker and it had more of that vibe to it. The phrase sight for sore eyes does portray a sense of relief, but that didn't really fit the song. So putting the spin on site for sore eyes really matched it to the vibe of the music behind the song. It also helped create the story of the song rather than the story of the phrase.
Working with Mitta Norath, someone who was also on the judging panel that picked you, must be a strange dynamic. What did he push you on in the studio that you would never have pushed yourselves on, and where did you push back?
He was great to work with. He was very flexible around what we wanted and he didn't try to push too much upon us when he didn't really need to. Working with him after he had been a judge at Bandwith gave us a confidence boost because we knew he'd already liked what he had seen of us. He did push us in some spots. We have a lot of live experience, but we haven't recorded much at all. In the recording studio there were things we hadn’t done before. He helped us out with things like vocal melodies in the song that we wouldn't usually sing live.
Your influences run from Silverchair and Violent Soho through Queens of the Stone Age and classic Aussie pub rock. That’s a wide net. What is the one common thread you hear across all of those that you‘re trying to keep alive in Jetlag?
In terms of influences, it is a pretty wide range of band. We enjoy them all and want to draw the best parts from each. In the Aussie pub rock scene, you want to get the crowd involved. We want to have enough energy behind our songs to get the crowd involved. From other influences, keeping the grunge scene alive can be as simple as distorted guitars. Also, we do not want to put ourselves in a box of genre. We aim to keep expanding our sound, we don’t want to be enclosed.
Playing King Street Hotel, Coast Fest and Coastal Grown Festival at 16 and 17 puts you in front of very different rooms. What have those crowds taught you about your own songs that a rehearsal room never could?
Playing popular songs will get the crowd differently when they can sing along. With our own songs, you've really got to write it to a certain level of energy or make them easy-listening so that a crowd can enjoy the song without knowing it. Seeing how our songs are accepted in front of different crowds really helps us do that. Playing live you have to keep pushing on with the song, even if you mess up. You can’t stop and start again. You to plough on. The atmosphere is very different from a rehearsal room. You feed off the crowd and use their energy.
Teen artist Phoebe Thiem did the bespoke cover art for the single. There’s something quietly cool about a teenage band choosing another young artist for their visual identity rather than a bigger name. What did you want the artwork to say about the song?
The artwork is about reflecting the mood of the song and reflecting what we want the aesthetic of the band to be. Getting a teenage artist to design the album cover reflects teenage energy. Sight For Sore Eyes is about a girl, so having a girl on a cover with those eyes in a satirical aesthetic art style reflects the energy of the song.
Building a band while you’re still at school is a specific kind of hard work. What has Jetlag had to sacrifice to get to this point, and what is one thing you refuse to give up for it?
We obviously give up a lot of our free time. There's not a lot we wouldn't give up for the band. The band takes priority but we still obviously find time to do teenage things. We put a lot of energy into the band, but there are still times we go: ‘I just wanna do this or that’. We still live our own lives.
If Jetlag looks back on Sight for Sore Eyes in ten years, what do you hope they remember about the version of the band that made this song, and what do you hope they’ve grown into by then?
I hope we remember the raw younger versions of ourselves and our teenage energy. It is the first song we wrote as a band, and just how we went about doing that, what fun we had and how new it was to us. I hope we've grown and are more mature in a sense. We still want to be having fun. Hopefully, we are in a position where we can inspire young bands.There were a number of people we've looked up to and taken inspiration from. Ideally, young musicians are looking at us in a similar vein. We can provide inspiration for the next generation. Music-wise, have a more sophisticated mindset towards songwriting and more prolific themes.
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