Jesse Welles has brought back protest music

Review: Jesse Welles has brought back protest music and he doesn’t care who he hurls rocks at

One of social media’s biggest new talents has dropped into town and he’s got a few bones to pick with everyone.

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“You can know a lot, you can know a little, but whatever you do, just don’t blow the whistle.”

If you haven’t come across Jesse Welles yet, chances your social media algorithm is mostly skewed towards funny pet videos and homewares “hacks”.

But for those who have jobs that require being on top of every major crisis, scandal and catastrophe — or just those with a rank addiction to doomscrolling the many absurdities of 2026 — chances are Welles has popped up.

He’s done very well to ride a tsunami of social media attention over the past few years, amassing 2.1 million fans on Instagram alone. But unlike many dozens of contemporary social-star-turned-touring-musicians, he’s done it without the aura of an opportunist dancing for money.

Instead, he throws heavy stones at the government, and just about anything else that is big, powerful and seemingly untouchable.

A mate of mine described him as the “TikTok Woody Guthrie”. The shoe fits.

[War Isn’t Murder]

At some point in their lives, every long-haired bloke with a guitar thinks they have a revolutionary message to tell the world — one that definitely hasn’t been shared before.

More often than not they end up looking and sounding like that poser uni student on Family Guy.

But with Welles, 33, the shtick feels effortlessly legitimate. He’s appears a shy guy at heart and his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience showed a soft-spoken bloke armed with some very strong opinions about the state of our planet.

With songs criticising the endless lists of alleged misdeeds of major powers — from big banking, pharmaceutical giants, arms manufacturers to the White House — it’s very unlikely he’s on the roster to play JP Morgan’s Christmas party.

Or most weddings for that matter.

But he doesn’t need to now. Because he’s struck a note with millions of equally fed-up listeners around the world in a remarkably short amount of time.

At his live show at Sydney’s Factory Theatre, which took place amid the backdrop of the raucous biannual King Street Crawl, it was immediately clear punters were here for something different to the deluge of party punk bands playing across the Inner West on Sunday.

Leaving the sweaty downstairs shindig to go listen to a comparatively reserved protest singer felt like going to eat vegetables while sitting next to a platter of greasy burgers.

But surprise, surprise, veggies are good for you.

While he has a very impressive Kurt Cobain-esque rasp and extremely refined songwriting chops, Welles isn’t the kind of dude who’s trying to knock you down with vocal gymnastics every song.

It’s more about a man slinging poetry against a classic, folk guitar backdrop.

The arrangement sometimes borders on comedic, especially his flighty tune about the Boeing whistleblower scandal, a bluntly-worded song about the deaths of high-placed former employees after they spoke about alleged malpractice.

“Your life can be trash, completely dismal. But it could always be worse if you just blow the whistle.”

Where someone like Bob Dylan wraps messages under layers of imagery, Welles goes for the blunt punch to the teeth every song.

A large portion of his set is dedicated to a more standard style of folk rock with a drummer, but the meat of his work that propelled him all the way from Arkansas to Sydney is in the dozens of timely, solo protest songs that go huge on social media.

He didn’t have much to say to the Sydney crowd between tunes, the songs do all that work for him. He simply said “this place is cool beans” when an enthusiastic punter welcomed him to Australia.

There were thunderous cheers from the Aussie audience when he alluded to First Nations people in a song about immigration, and then when he said “Greenland is in trouble”.

But for those expecting this protest singer to preach politics in between songs like John Butler, this isn’t the gig.

What did surprise me is how band-focused the set was. A roaring cover of Nirvana’s ‘Heart Shaped Box’ was an unexpected departure from a gig billed as a solo folk singer — and the show is much better for the variety.

Up-and-coming musicians are finding it impossible to cut through amid the social media deluge as everyone attempts to “game the system” and get their song popping.

But Welles’ simple videos of him plucking away in a field have proven there’s still an appetite for the most bare bones of entertainment.

Plonk him in the corner of a 1966 American coffee shop and he’d probably blend in pretty effortlessly.

That’s always a good thing to say about an artist, I think.

Jesse Welles’ ‘Down Under the Powerlines’ tour continues with a second night at the Factory Theatre on Tuesday January 27.

He caps the tour off with back to back shows in Perth (January 28, Freo Social) and Adelaide (January 29, The Gov).

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/tours/review-jesse-welles-has-brought-back-protest-music-and-he-doesnt-care-who-he-throws-rocks-at/news-story/f33f3542d998c961fff29bdd46c22c1c