Three-part harmony, suits they embroidered themselves, and an accordion nobody asked for. Brisbane trio The Inadequates have spent eight years turning acoustic music into something closer to theatre, and they are still stuck with the name they picked as a placeholder.

Marcus Church began busking around Australia with his family at eleven. He has since graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, toured with guitar royalty Michael Fix, won scholarships to study in the United States under Bryan Sutton and Chris Thile, and was named a 2025 AFMA finalist for Instrumentalist of the Year.

His brother Jackson Church was handed an accordion for his eleventh birthday and is now one of the country's most in-demand players on the instrument, recording with artists as varied as Clelia Adams, Tyrone and Lesley, and Fino Rudd. Lawson Mackriell, also a Conservatorium graduate, brings guitar, banjo and mandolin, and has toured Australia and the UK with Lyric, playing Spilt Milk, BIGSOUND and SXSW along the way.

Together they play mandolin, accordion and acoustic guitar with the volume and abandon of a rock band. It has taken them to the National Folk Festival, Gympie Music Muster, Blue Mountains, Dorrigo, Cygnet and Illawarra, and to a debut album, Haven't You Heard?, recorded with Benja King on double bass. Its twelve tracks run from love songs told from unsettling angles to breakup ballads, drunken waltzes and sharp-elbowed satire.

Expect close harmony that shifts from a whisper to a full-throated roar in a single bar, instrumental writing that rewards a close listen, and the kind of between-song banter that explains the band name better than any biography can. Eight years in the making, and the album title has yet to receive a single yes.