The Delines Return To Australia For Third Tour With The Set Up

The Portland band will bring their country-soul noir back to Australia in April 2027, with nine performances across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

by Paul Cashmere

The Delines will return to Australia in April 2027 for their third Australian tour, seven years after their first visit and four years after their most recent run, with the Portland band bringing their 2026 album The Set Up to venues across the east coast.

Watch the 2014 Noise11 interview with Amy and Willy from The Declines:

Led by songwriter and novelist Willy Vlautin and vocalist Amy Boone, The Delines have built their own musical territory around country, soul, Americana and understated noir. Their songs are less concerned with the grand sweep of the American dream than with the people left standing at the edge of it.

That makes the Australian return particularly significant for followers who discovered The Delines during their earlier visits. The band first toured Australia in 2014, the year their debut album Colfax was released, before returning in 2023 for a national run that included Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and regional Victorian dates.

The 2027 tour gives The Delines a new chapter to present. The Set Up, released in 2026, continues the band’s established combination of Vlautin’s character-driven writing and Boone’s restrained, emotionally exposed delivery. The album was announced as a new studio record in late 2025, with its release set for March 2026.

The band’s appeal has always rested on the contrast between the modest scale of the stories and the depth of the music. Vlautin writes about lonely travellers, damaged relationships, gamblers, addicts, dreamers and people trying to get through another difficult night, while Boone gives those characters an emotional centre without overplaying the drama.

Musically, The Delines leave plenty of space around those stories. Organ, understated percussion, soulful guitar, brass and Boone’s vocals create arrangements that can feel intimate without becoming sparse. The result is music that often suggests a film before there is a film, placing the listener somewhere between a late-night bar, an empty highway and a motel room with the television still running.

Vlautin formed The Delines after his years with Richmond Fontaine, building the project around Boone’s distinctive voice. The two had already crossed paths musically, with Boone having toured with Richmond Fontaine and performed female vocal parts associated with Vlautin’s earlier work.

Colfax established the template in 2014, followed by Scenic Sessions in 2015 and The Imperial in 2019. The Sea Drift followed in 2022, while the band’s subsequent releases have continued to expand the relationship between Vlautin’s literary storytelling and Boone’s vocal performances.

That literary connection is central to understanding The Delines. Vlautin is also a novelist, with his writing frequently exploring the same kinds of marginal lives that populate the band’s songs. The Delines therefore operate somewhere between a traditional band and a continuing body of character studies, with each song offering another glimpse into a larger fictional landscape.

The current line-up includes Boone on vocals and guitar, Vlautin on guitar and vocals, Cory Gray on keyboards and trumpet, Sean Oldham on percussion and vocals, and Freddy Trujillo on bass and vocals.

For Australian audiences, the 2027 tour also represents a chance to hear how the newer material sits alongside songs from a catalogue that has now developed across more than a decade. The official Delines tour history confirms the band’s 2023 Australian run as their second visit, following their earlier Australian dates.

Love Police will present nine Australian performances in April, including two shows on April 18 in Creswick and two more on April 25 in Brisbane. The run begins in Melbourne and moves through regional Victoria before heading to Sydney, Newcastle, Bellingen, Eltham and Brisbane.

Dates:

Thursday 15 April, Melbourne, Northcote Social Club
Friday 16 April, Melbourne, Brunswick Ballroom
Saturday 17 April, Meeniyan, Meeniyan Town Hall
Sunday 18 April, Creswick, Odessa at Leaver’s Hotel, matinee and evening shows
Wednesday 21 April, Sydney, Oxford Art Factory
Thursday 22 April, Newcastle, Stag & Hunter
Friday 23 April, Bellingen, The Loyal Bellingen Golf Club
Saturday 24 April, Eltham, Eltham Hotel
Sunday 25 April, Brisbane, Junk Bar, matinee and evening shows

Tickets go on sale Thursday October 8 at lovepolice.com.au