‘You Have To Build A Community Of People Around You’: Sonnet And The Breadboys Are Working It Out Together

From Battle Of The Bands to Headliners with Tim Rogers, Mahalia Barnes and Ella Hooper, Sonnet Cure is a rising star already brightly shining. 

With bandmate Max Mollica she explained meeting while studying music at uni and the joy of jumping in the deep in.

“I remember it was Max and Toby [Gott] sitting next to me and we didn't know each other, it was our first year [uni]. I really wanted to do Battle Of The Bands, and Max was really intimidating because he was a really cool metalhead,” Sonnet laughs. 

“I was really scared, but we needed a drummer so bad, so I remember a sheepishly asking him, and he was like, ‘Yeah, of course, I'd love to.’”

For Max, it wasn’t a hard ask to play with the charismatic singer, except that he was actually a bass player. Still, the invite to join the band drum was too good to pass up. 

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“I've been a bass player and I knew the drums and I'd grown up playing the drums, but I'd never played in a band playing the drums. So it was, like a really vulnerable kind of moment for me to be approached because I had the same perception of Sonnet as this really cool singer-songwriter,” he explains. 

However, the challenge was worth it. “It was just like a moment of putting myself outside of my comfort zone and going ‘It'll be a bit of fun, it'll be great, right?’” he notes.

“And then we just all ended up being really great friends and it was just like that really unique chemistry between all of us.”

The resulting band, Sonnet And The Breadboys, is indeed more than the sum of its parts. 

With a name inspired by a side hustle job (all great musos start out by working at a bakery, hey, Harry Styles?), lead singer Sonnet is hard to deny with energy that is both familiar in the best Chrissy Amphlett meets Amy Taylor vibes, as well as clearly her own person. 

With the rest of the band there is a real energy, almost urgency, that isn’t aggressive, but is clearly not waiting around. While finishing a degree in Contemporary Music at the University of Sydney, Sonnet also featured in the ABC series Headliners as part of a band of artists with disabilities, mentored by industry icons.

Sonnet’s role on Headliners comes by way of her own experience as a disabled artist. Deaf in one ear as the result of being born with a deformed cochlear, her tenacity as a musician has resulted in reaching some amazing heights.

In August, she performed at the sold-out Mundi Mundi Bash before a crowd of about 15,000 as a member of the Superband – appearing as part of an immense line-up which boasted the likes of Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus, Leo Sayer, Kasey Chambers, and more.

It’s the second time in two years she’s performed at Mundi Mundi, having previously performed in 2024 as part of Together With Strangers – with whom Sync Or Swim joined forces as part of Headliners this year.

“It's weird the contrast of Headliners and like being in this band,” Sonnet says. “I've been very grateful. There were lots of things I didn't realise I was taking for granted in like my band and like the community we're in. And in Headliners, everything is so carefully considered and because of that [you can] lose a lot of your freedom to express yourself. 

“And I still feel like I was definitely able to express myself, but I was very much just the singer on that,” she adds. “And it was great, don’t get me wrong. But what I'm starting to realise is you can't just hope that a formula is going to work. 

“You have to build a community of people around you, you have to work it out together.” 

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For Sonnet, Max and the rest of their band, the emphasis on community is not just lip service. From writing to recording to making videos and socials, there is a vibrant indie scene they are building up and drawing on. 

“That narrative of ‘this pop star blows up overnight and it's just them and they produced, recorded, wrote, promoted, made all the art, the music video, did their hair and makeup’ – it never happens like that,” she explains. 

“There are always so many amazing, inspiring people around them that are also supporting them and like giving them the confidence in themselves as an artist and you need to make sure that you're picking up people and constantly trying to bring them on board and that they're inspired by you. 

“That they want to be there and every time you meet someone you want to try not like trying to plug yourself, but you want to be aligned with them creatively,” she adds.

Even when it comes to reflecting on working with really big names via Headliners Sonnet and the band have the same idea – it’s about creative connections. 

“For example, Tim Rogers, because I was on the show I got to spend a lot of time with him but it's because we both, you know, enjoy being front people that it was fun to work together,” she explains. 

“I wouldn't be asking some random metal singer to join, and to sing with them like that. You just can't, there's no point, you're not going to enjoy it for each other. 

“So yeah, it’s just about being in the right places and finding connections with people.”