Melbourne/Naarm alternative rock band Society of Beggars have written a song for the burnouts, the troublemakers and the people who were never expected to get anywhere. Their new single, “Swooping with Vultures“, brings a groovier, swaggering garage-rock sound to a story about hitting bottom, getting through the night and the people who stay with you along the way.
Vocalist Yianni Michalopoulos has a concrete crowd in mind. They’re the kids he knew growing up, especially those from the bad side of town, who were often the ones he most wanted to spend time with.
The song has a rough sort of affection for people whose lives haven’t necessarily gone well. Its narrator has traded his soul, taken a knife in the back and ended up with nowhere decent to sleep. The chorus keeps returning to vultures and the invitation to pick at the bones, with the line “Ainβt so fun but itβs home” saying plenty about the relationship between belonging somewhere and getting hurt there.
Society of Beggars have never been strangers to excess in their work, although this particular song comes with a memory from Yianni’s school days that he’s carried around for years.
“Some teacher at school told me I was ‘swooping with the vultures’. I thought, what the fuck does that mean? Quite poetic for a guy wearing crocs with their socks tucked in. It always stayed with me anyway.”
Apparently, the teacher wasn’t impressed with his choice of company. Yianni, on the other hand, found plenty to like about hanging around people who were rebellious, excessive and frequently over the top. He remembers the way certain kids would get lumped together by what he calls “the machine”, and how that could bring them closer. When you’re young and already being treated as a problem, finding people willing to push back alongside you can count for quite a lot.
“The kids from the bad side of town were always infinitely more fascinating to me. Those people are priceless friends when you wanna take on that machine together.”
What happens to those friendships as everyone gets older is where “Swooping with Vultures” gets particularly personal. People eventually start looking back and separating those who made something of themselves from those who didn’t. Some former friends might have settled down and found their way. Others spent too long partying, got caught up in drugs or made decisions that left their lives in a mess.
Yianni has watched the way people talk about the latter group change over time. It’s easy to look at somebody’s later problems and forget what made them such good company years earlier, or why you were close in the first place.
“I think we lose some of that feeling as we get older and we look back at the people who make it out or who donβt, and we change our viewpoint of them. ‘Oh, they fucked their life on drugs, or too many late nights or whatever.'”
“Those people are unforgettable in that moment in life though. Late night people. They were always my kind of people. And bless ’em all. Iβm still fighting the good fight, ya know?”
There’s a lot packed into those few sentences, especially coming from somebody who has already spent some time examining his own appetite for taking things too far.
When we spoke with Society of Beggars in September about “I Want I Want”, the first single from their forthcoming album “Drunk on Love, Buried in Dust“, Yianni talked at length about excess and what happens when wanting more becomes a habit people can never quite satisfy.
He started with his own wanderlust and the intoxicating side of playing in a band, then got into the uglier consequences he had witnessed among people close to him. Some had been caught up in drugs and depression. Others, including people from the music world and his own family circles, had become immersed in online resentment, conspiracy-minded politics and the endless search for somebody else to blame for their disappointments.
He also remembered parties that had started with genuine love and joy before becoming unpleasant as people took too much of everything. The song eventually came back to one simple question: how much is enough?
That conversation covered plenty of ground, and Yianni sees a direct connection between the two singles.
“They definitely share the same bloodline, but from opposite ends of the blade.”
“I Want I Want” follows the appetite for excess and the damage it can cause. “Swooping with Vultures” spends time with the people who were part of that world, including those whose lives didn’t turn out the way anyone hoped. Yianni can recognise the trouble they got into and still remember them as extraordinary friends.
There’s also a musical difference between the two releases. “I Want I Want” came with the band’s more frantic post-punk instincts, the sort of song Yianni calls a “blister-popping post-punk anxiety rush”. The new single has more of a garage-rock swagger, with its recurring chorus and rock’n’roll attitude giving it a different character. It was produced by Anj and Society of Beggars.
Both songs will appear on “Drunk on Love, Buried in Dust”, the band’s ten-track second album following 2024’s “Levitator”. And with two singles now out, it’s becoming apparent that Society of Beggars have been putting together a fairly varied record.
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Yianni is especially enthusiastic about the ground they’ve covered.
“But the whole album is really quite the fuckin’ opus, if I do say so myself.”
“The opener is an instrumental with violins, thereβs guest vocalists, screeching feedback guitars that will hurt some peopleβs feelings, and a campfire singalong.”
Those details already suggest a record willing to go in several directions. The broader album also gets into family, love, death and broken memories, and there’s space for much quieter music alongside the heavier guitars. Society of Beggars have played around with different sides of rock’n’roll for years, but Yianni has a much simpler way of explaining what they’ve tried to get across this time.
“I feel like it is the feeling of coming into our garage on any given Saturday night and hanging out with us. Weβre loud and overbearing, spilling our drinks, yelling about Thin Lizzy at you. And then we’re serenading you with our soft, sensitive side too. Youβre going to get sticky, but youβre gonna have fun.”
It’s easy to picture that sort of evening with Society of Beggars. Yianni and his brother Jim (Dimitrios Michalopoulos) have been making music together for years, with drummer Tom “Dibi” Di Biase and bassist ZoΓ« Alexa completing the band. Their latest album promises the louder, messy side of spending time together, the occasional softer moment and whatever happens when everyone starts arguing about Thin Lizzy.
And perhaps those old friends from Yianni’s youth wouldn’t be entirely out of place in that garage either. He still speaks about them with the affection of somebody who remembers exactly why they were worth knowing, regardless of what happened later.
“Swooping with Vultures” was released on 16 October 2026 as the second single from “Drunk on Love, Buried in Dust”, which arrives independently on 13 November. You can hear the single on Bandcamp, watch the official music video and find more on the upcoming album through the band’s website.
