The black-hearted brilliance of Magic Dirt brought Adalita Srsen to the limelight. The seminal Geelong grunge band that Srsen formed with Dean Turner combined powerhouse live performances and fuzz-riff anthems to become alt-rock favorites in the late ’90s and early 2000s. After Turner’s passing in 2009, Srsen kicked off her solo career with 2011’s self-titled outing, which was produced in part by Turner and earned a Best Independent Album AIR Award. The singer’s smoldering intensity and immaculately distorted guitars boldly opened a new chapter of her career. That was bolstered in 2013 with All Day Venus, which featured Dirty Three’s Jim White on drums. In contrast to Magic Dirt’s noisy forward drive, Srsen’s solo songs often unfold as introspective dirges that bare her naked emotions. For example, witness the mingling of desire and self-doubt on “Savage Heart” from 2022’s Inland, an album that recruited Mick Harvey (The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and Marty Brown (Art of Fighting) and laid the groundwork for the three collaborators to reconvene in 2025 in the Melbourne supergroup Bleak Squad.