The Jungle Giants on bringing sexy back

Words by Hannah Powell. Image by Jo Duck.

Meet Sam Hales, singer, songwriter, and producer of Australian indie-pop band The Jungle Giants. Fresh from their tour in Aotearoa New Zealand, we take a trip and travel across the ether to ask Sam about touring, recording, and bringing sexy bald men back in music.

Kia ora Sam! For those unfamiliar, who is in the band?

We’ve got me, Sam, who sings. We’ve got our lead guitarist and one of my oldest friends, Cesira. Well, actually the whole band are my oldest friends but Cesira, she’s up there with one of my best friends. We’ve got Andrew on the bass, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. And we’ve got Keelan on the drums, who is a very pragmatic, lovely fellow who’s very trustworthy. 

The Jungle Giants have been playing together for a long time now. How does your band dynamic play out?

I feel like in the band, we all have different roles. Kealan and Andrew are very supportive, like when we’re setting up a show; they always help out the crew. Cesira and I often go get a margarita or something; that’s the thing that we like to do. But we’re all happy, and we’re very supportive of each other. I feel like we’re really lucky to love each other so much because we all went to school together, we’ve become closer friends over the course of all these years, and when we hang out, it’s just like family. It’s even better than a family. It’s the family you chose, you know.

It must be nice to be back on home soil. How was the tour?

That was such an awesome tour. It was reaffirming, it was exciting, and it was really, really nice. The crowds were so responsive. There were a lot of really new faces in the crowd, too, which is such a positive thing. It was like, ‘Welcome to all these new people. We’re The Jungle Giants; let’s have some fun’. And, you know, that’s obviously a sign of growth, new people are listening, and new people want to come check out the band. When it came to the band and the shows, we were all really happy. We were always a team, and if some shows didn’t go exactly as we planned, we still enjoyed it and put our backs into it. I always feel very accomplished after a tour and kind of relaxed, and I just feel great about what happened. 

So, you’re bringing baldness back. How come?

There are not many bald men in music. And bald men need to feel beautiful. And I feel beautiful. So when I go to shows, I notice the bald men. It’s really funny. Actually, I got really distracted at a show recently, where in the crowd, there was a guy with a shaved head. I looked at him, and he pointed at his head. It was like, ‘look at me!’. And I was like, ‘my guy!’. But yeah, I’m happy-go-lucky. And I think everyone should feel sexy, bald or not.

Feeling beautiful, is that reflected in your sound?

Yeah, I guess so. I’m confident in music, and it’s something that has evolved in my career. Just going back through our discography, you can tell I’ve changed the sound and forged something new over the course of the years as opposed to repeating things. And I think that’s really important. I think every artist should not feel limited to what they’ve done before. I think that because making music is fun, obviously, and your tastes in music will change. Like, you go to a party, you hear new music, and it excites you. So, you follow that. That’s the way I make music - I follow my heart with it and stay where the energy is.

Congratulations on your latest tune! Tell us more about ‘Rakata’…

I was messing around with some music, and I was in love with the idea of Spanish vocals. It just so happened that we were a couple of weeks away from going to Mexico earlier in the year. I asked my manager to help me find some Mexican female artists, and he sent me Renee. So, we set up some morning coffee in Roma, Mexico, and we clicked straight away… like, her energy. We were just staring at each other’s faces; we really liked each other. And then, so we just didn’t even really talk about the track. We talked about our lives and what music is to us and what we’ve been doing and why I’m here, and what she’s doing. And then we said, let’s do this. So a couple of days later, we met up at a café, had a margarita, had a couple of tacos, and we both brought out our notebooks, and we just made it – we took Spanish lyrics, and we made it into a story, stuck to the melody, and we made ‘Rakata.’

Not only do you sing and write, but you produced Quiet Ferocity, Love Signs, and ‘Rakata’ too. What has that process of production been like?

Recording music has become another language for me; it’s like playing another instrument. It felt like a luxury at the start, but now it’s part of my process, and I really enjoy that. Say you get an idea in the middle of the night, and it’s two ideas at the same time. You can hear them, so you just run to the computer, and boom - I’m loving the benefits of that. It makes your music more explorative, too, because you’re jumping into Logic, and you’re adding a harp, piano, timpani, whatever you need. It makes things more experimental, which is what I like.

Can you tease us about any upcoming music? An album, maybe?

It’s still in its blueprint phase. I’ve got a couple of singles done already, and I’ve got a little vault of tracks that have finished. But when I’m piecing together the record, I need the bigger picture. I’ve got so many ideas right now that I really like, but what I’m entering now is finding the four corners of the record. While you wait, take our first record for a spin. It’s our 10-year anniversary of it, actually.