Glenn Richards & The Venus Lakes - The Great Behind

Glenn Richards and the Venus Lakes release The Great Behind on IN.2 Records on 9th October, 2026. 

"Almost every songwriter in Australia has name-checked Richards as one of
the finest tunesmiths of his generation” - Daily Telegraph

The release marks the culmination of a musical love affair nearly twenty years in the making. In spring 2008, Johnny Depp was in his sun-drenched, art-deco home studio in LA — taking a breather from shooting Public Enemies in Chicago — painting a portrait of his recently departed dog, Moo, when something stopped him in his tracks. A song drifting from a friend's iPod. A song about an owner and his dog stoically preparing for death. The song was The Cold Acre, by Augie March.
The coincidence was too profound to ignore. Johnny learned the album it came from was called Moo, You Bloody Choir, and felt compelled to seek out every Augie March recording on the planet before contacting Glenn directly. Now, nearly twenty years later, Johnny gets to release Glenn's solo record on his very own label.

The first track off The Great Behind is ‘Pest’, an impossibly-urgent and weird slice of paranoid menace that begs to be jumped up and down to, Richards surely sounding like Blah, Blah, Blah-era Iggy when he sings “You make a desolation and call it peace”, a paraphrase of a line by Caledonian chieftain, Calgacus, celebrated in Roman historian Tacitus’ Agricola. Oh, yes.
It's one of life’s little anomalies that Glenn Richards can be both “a storyteller who is spoken of in reverential terms by his peers” and yet remain something of an enigma on this side of the planet, although this is surely set to change with the imminent release of The Great Behind. Peppered throughout with the kind of excitable pop perfection – 1990Never, Pest, Stuff of Life - you’ll be hard-pushed to find on any other record in 2026, it’s also a record with so many quiet moments of reflection, you’ll be tempted to take it to the beach, only to return in a frenzy when you realise it’s in danger of getting wet. “It’s a real record made in a piecemeal but highly creative way, and in real rooms which you can hear”, says Richards.

The Great Behind features Glenn Richards (vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion, mandolin, baglamas), Beau Thomas (drums), Louis Till (bass, double bass), Chris Richards (guitars), and Jethro Pickett (keyboards, lap steel). The album was recorded at The River Studio, Glaziers Bay, Dark Satanic Mill Studio, Hobart, Sandy Bay, Kingston Beach and Moonah, Hobart, and Suffolk.

Johnny Depp adds vocals to ‘Cold Hands, Warm Heart’.

Glenn Richards and the Venus Lakes have also confirmed a series of UK dates to promote the release of The Great Behind.

Thursday, October 8th, London, Rough Trade East
Saturday, October 10th, London, The Spice of Life
Tuesday October 13th, London, The Water Rats
Friday, October 16th, Brighton Prince Albert