Rufus Du Sol (2026)

One Liner: Good dance house tunes from Sydney

Wikipedia Genre: alternative dance, deep house, electronica, house
Home: Sydney, Australia

Poster Position: Headliner
Both Weekends.

[location]

Thoughts: Welp, back again.  They were here in 2017 and 2021.  In '17 they were down on the fifth line of the poster back, then became a top 5 headliner in '21, and now have graduated to the second spot on the poster.  All for something that I couldn't differentiate from any of the other techno bands that have played the Fest in the past.  Wheeee!

They were originally known as RUFUS, but in North America they had to go by Rufus du Sol because of some other band who already had Rufus.  Which seems weird, to have one name in one country and another name for the rest of the world.  I've said this before, but if I ask five random people on the street if a band name exists and none of them say yes, then you can't have copyright on it.  The most popular band should always win.

This is three guys making house music to dance to, not the more recently-big EDM sounding stuff, more like the fun house stuff that was big before the Skrillexes and DeadMau5es of the world took over.  They've won a few Australian music awards, including a "Best Dance Release" ARIA in 2015, for "You Were Right."  Their second-most streamed at 393.4 million.

Pretty good tune.  Here is the thing that confuses me - their Spotify bio says that they were formed in 2010 "when a rain-soaked vacation to Byron Bay turned into an impromptu jam session."  How do electronic artists enter into an impromptu jam session?  Was everyone sitting around with their macbooks on their lap, reading their twitter feeds, when suddenly one of them turned on a sick beat, the other starting throwing in some tight hand claps, and the third one sang a few insane bars about love and peace and the relativity of time?  I can see some guitar nerds having a jam sesh, but I'm not sure I can imagine it with machine music.  "oh, I just happened to have my Casio 9500 right here on the beach!  Y'all wanna collab?"

Their Spotify streaming totals are actually surprisingly low for a headliner.  No song over 500 million?  Only a few with more than 100 million?  I guess popularity isn't what they aim for with the EDM stuff, they just need a warm body for the kids to do drugs during.  I'd expect a bigger set of popular songs for a big print band.  Maybe their manager has naked photos of the Charleses from C3.  Their Wikipedia is a pretty boring recitation of albums and concerts from the past, not a lot about their background or history.

Three albums from these guys, 2014's Atlas, 2016's Bloom, 2018's Solace, 2021's Surrender, 2024's Inhale/Exhale, and a pile of singles and remixes.  That earlier one ("You Were Right") is on the same album as their top streamer - "Innerbloom" with 450.5 million streams and an unnecessary ten minute long runtime.

I don't know why the word that comes to mind for this song is "smart."  Something about the tune and clean tone of the music makes me think this is smart music.  Weird thing to think, but there you go.  And it makes no sense with most of this music, because these lyrics are dogshit.  "Music is better!  When we're together!  Music is better!  When we're together!"  or "There's no place I'd rather be!  Feel myself with you!  There's no place I'd rather be!  Feel myself with you!"  WOW.  Break out the Pulitzer.

In listening through the 2016 album, I keep getting snatches of Chris Martin/Coldplay in the singing, even if the music is nothing like traditional Coldplay music.  I like some of these tunes. Normally, I wouldn't say that I would go after dance music or electronica, but I've enjoyed listening to these albums for the past day. I guess I like "house" more than "EDM."

The 2018 and 2021 albums keep using this one BLATT of synth sound that reminds me of something from the Stranger Things opening music.  "On My Knees," from Surrender, is the most popular song and has the most streams, from those, with 245.5 million.  

Pretty dang catchy.  They actually won a Grammy for "Alive," off of that same album.  Which, hilariously, has 49 million streams.  The Best Dance/Electronic Recording of 2022 and no one even wants to hear it more than other songs on that same album.  Great job Grammy voters.

I have let this roll for the last day and a half, and it is pretty good when you need to crank out some work and just want something mindless to bounce along in the background.  Again, that doesn't mean I'd actually go spend the time to boogie around to this at the end of a night, but I could imagine that being a fun time.