WHEN one imagines a band celebrating the height of their success, not many would picture them crowded around a speaker in a van, “nervously chugging beers.”
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Where’s the champagne? The five-star hotel?
Yet that was the situation Brisbane indie band The Jungle Giants found themselves in for January’s triple j Hottest 100 countdown.
“The entire day of Hottest 100, everybody else celebrates and has fun, but most musicians freak out,” bassist Andrew Dooris says. “We’re sitting there anxiously biting our teeth, especially if you think you had a good year.”
And what a 2017 it was. Their third album Quiet Ferocity produced four entries in the Hottest 100 with Feel The Way I Do (#16), On Your Way Down (#50), Bad Dream (#57) and Used To Be In Love (#59).
“The Hottest 100 is a really unique type of praise or reward, as it’s pretty democratic,” Kooris says. “It’s not just sales, or a panel of industry types giving you a pat on the back for doing great, it’s actually the people. It’s the biggest compliment you can get in music around the world.”
The Hottest 100 success has propelled The Jungle Giants into that next echelon of Australian acts. Their April national tour has more “sold-out signs” than not.
“We already had a big Christmas-New Year’s with Falls Festival,” Dooris says. “I thought I’d be ready for a couple of months off, but I’m definitely not. I want to get back out and play as many shows as possible. It’s so nice to have sold out [Sydney’s] The Metro in a day and doing three of them, three Melbourne shows and two Tivoli shows in our hometown.
The appeal of The Jungle Giants’ is so great, they’ve been chosen to headline the inaugural FKA Festival at Hope Estate in October.
Other acts on the bill include Ali Barter, The Belligerents, Kingswood, Luca Brasi, Maddy Jane, Tired Lion and Trophy Eyes.
The Jungle Giants might be achieving new-found levels of success, but it hasn’t been a overnight phenomenon. The four-piece began in 2011 when they met at Brisbane’s Mansfield State High School.
The band’s early music perfected their jangly brand of indie-pop before they began incorporating psych rock and rhythmic drum beats.
For Quiet Ferocity, vocalist Sam Hales went in a different direction. He locked himself in a bunker each day writing between 40 and 50 songs.
The result was greater electronic production and tighter pop melodies. Dooris says the band enthusiastically embraced the new direction.
“We’re all constantly around each other when we’re on the road,” Dooris says. “We’re all exposed to whatever the other person is listening to.”
FKA Festival tickets are on sale through Moshtix.
Sage Swinton
Sage Swinton is a news reporter who was born and bred in the Hunter. She has been with the Newcastle Herald since June 2020, and covers Newcastle council as well as other general news.
Sage Swinton is a news reporter who was born and bred in the Hunter. She has been with the Newcastle Herald since June 2020, and covers Newcastle council as well as other general news.
