Ten years and four albums in, Brisbane-born four-piece The Jungle Giants have grown to be the alt-pop-rock royalty of not just their home country, but the entire global music scene. Seamlessly blending their indie roots with R&B waves and dancey beats, the four friends are currently working on yet another chapter of their musical journey, their upcoming fifth studio album, off the back of their recently concluded UK tour. And with even more live appearances to come this year and musical boundaries to be pushed in all directions, the group is nowhere done evolving their sound – and they clearly wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
Having formed the band during their school days, The Jungle Giants – made up of vocalist Sam Hales, lead guitarist Cesira Aitken, bassist Andrew Dooris and drummer Keelan Bijker – have spent the better part of their lives together and going over the motions of what it means to be musicians in today’s industry. And through endless hours of creating their art together, touring the world, cooking meals, playing cards, and so much more, they’ve ended up where they are now – in a place of pure gratitude for each other. “Our story is actually a really cute tale. We were all at school together. I was in the grade above and made a promise to my mom that I wasn’t going to start a band that I couldn’t keep. I’d been writing all this music, and when I finished school, I committed myself to getting two jobs to make enough money to record the first EP. I called up the guys, they were halfway through their final year of school, and I was like, when you guys finish school, we’re going to record the EP, we’re going to start the band. And so I had six months to make 8000 bucks. And for a 16-year-old, that’s so much money. I worked at McDonald’s and at a convenience store, sometimes back-to-back, early morning into 11 p.m. and just wrote music while I was stacking Cokes and Sprites in the shelf,”, singer Sam Hales reminisces about the early starts of the group that we now know and love as The Jungle Giants.
But despite their own utmost confidence in their future and talents, some of the people around them weren’t as easy to convince than others: “When you’re a kid, people say, “Oh, no one ever makes money from music”. And then I’d bring up Aussie bands and I’d be like, “What about all these bands? What about AC/DC?” And then adults at the time would be like, “Yeah, but they’re AC/DC”. And I’d say, “Well, they were also 15 one time and they sucked”. You know what I mean? So let me suck until I’m good.” And thankfully, people did, as Hales shares with a smile: “We’ve been doing the band full time ever since, and we are more in love now than we ever have been. We’ve known each other forever, we just discovered as of last year, we’ve been in the band for more than half our lives, since we were 15. It’s a long tale of school friends that became adult friends.”
Over the course of all these years, the quartet has pocketed nearly a billion streams worldwide and moved through various sonic shifts, from their iconic debut record ‘Learn To Exist’ to their latest full-length endeavour, the chart-topping ‘Love Signs’, which saw the group tap into their more dance-heavy soundscape. Coming off the latter, frontman Hales, who also writes and produces most of the band’s projects, took 2024 as a phase of radical self-discovery, following the end of a decade-long relationship and a jet-ski accident requiring surgery and two months of recovery. The result of it all came as the ethereal ‘Hold My Hand’ – a first taste of the group’s upcoming LP and a breath of fresh air for Hales, possibly also thanks to the way it was created: “When I started mixing the new music, our engineer had just moved to LA, so we were already working together remotely. We actually prefer to do it that way anyway, we work faster that way. So, I was like, “Oh, it’s really cold in Melbourne right now, I’m forced to do it remotely, so why don’t I just go somewhere?”. And then I had the opportunity to go to Europe a month early and tick off a couple of new Greek islands that I’d never been to. The work-life balance was really nice. You work half the day mixing, then the rest of the day you relax and refresh your ears. I spent all my time listening to new music and then swimming. And eating a lot of food as well.”
“The music and I, we’re walking into the sunset holding hands. I’m taking it on a date, just to say thank you.”
Speaking of food, as singer Hales highlights, it is something that has become a somewhat vital part of the band’s life on tour, which can be best described as pure and utter quality time together, just the four friends: “We go hard when it comes to food. It doesn’t always have to be super fancy. Sometimes, say we’re in Singapore, we’ll go to a secret little Michelin Guide shack. That’s a really great part of touring as well, just checking out what the city has to offer. It’s another way to feel the joy of life. You spend a lot of time with the crew, or management, or, you know, fans, but we really love the four of us sitting somewhere, having a really great meal, and we love playing cards. It’s like the calm before the storm – we’ll play cards and eat some great food, and get really connected. We’re hugging each other, and we notice that if we skip that, we do miss that moment of connectivity just between the four of us, so it’s become a bit of a ritual.”
It comes as no surprise then that four-piece has stayed as close as ever, holding up their immaculate synergy that can be felt on and off stage, and without a doubt weaves itself through their newest project as a thread of glittering hopefulness and emotional balance. “We’ve changed our sound a lot of times, but there are still some quintessential things that make us The Jungle Giants. I really like this new chapter, this new era, because it feels like embracing things that I’ve liked before, because usually my pattern of behaviour would be to start a completely new slate,”, Hales explains about his new writing and creation process and how he came to a place of his own musical renaissance during it, “Over the course of the last year, I’ve done a lot of work on myself and completed this 12-week writing programme called ‘artistic healing’. It’s a way of embracing every part of you, trying to do other things as well, like having a hobby, working on your work-life balance. At the end of that process, I discovered that I don’t need to deny what I’ve done before, because in a way, that’s like shortening your inspiration. So, after that, I had all this music, and it has given me a really fun way of expressing the things I’m into and things that I’ve maybe been a little bit shy about. It’s still quintessentially The Jungle Giants, but more levelled up in so many different ways because I’m not hiding behind fear.”
“We’ve been in the band for more than half our lives, since we were 15. We are more in love now than we ever have been.”
Putting a full stop to this old chapter of his life while also ringing in this new one, the aforementioned ‘Hold My Hand’ has already been welcomed with open arms by the Australian four-piece’s dedicated fanbase. But while the stellar single already paints the picture of a record that focuses in on the matters of the heart, Hales is quick to tease some more details about the new album in line with his favourite lyrics he has written for it: “Full spoiler alert – there’s this new song called, ‘Are You Seeing Anyone?’ It’s a question and a story. For me, in the new music, I’m really focused on lyrics that remind me of specific moments. This one’s like, are you looking for love and open to some attention? And it’s this really sweet thing. It’s like, if you meet someone at a party and you want to know if they’re available, you’d better just ask them. I love those lyrics because they are so conversational.”
Now finally feeling he is back in the driver’s seat, frontman Hales wasn’t just inspired to simply dive into this new world of The Jungle Giants’ sonic universe together with his bandmates, but also to change up his own personal view on what place music and his job as an artist take up in his life, as he explains pointedly: “I feel like in the past, I’ve put a lot of my self-worth on music, that’s been a new part of the journey as well. I’m trying to diversify my self-worth just so I don’t put too much expectation on my music. If you need everything that you get in life from music, then you’re telling the music to make you feel good, which is not great. So that’s one thing that I’ve learned going into this.” And so what came from this wasn’t just a rekindled love for the band and spark that led to the creation of their fifth record, but also a new perspective on music itself – one that promises to introduce new sides to the group that are yet to be met and will hopefully stay for the whole ride that is to come: “I think I can have balance in my life. Each record is like an emotional journey, not just a musical one. And I’ll always remember this one because the songs are essentially telling me, “Thank you for letting us be”. I found these other ways to be happy. I’ve grown to learn that you need to be kind to your music and not tell it to make you feel a certain way. And the music and I, we’re walking into the sunset holding hands. I’m taking it on a date, just to say thank you.”
Written by Laura Weingrill // Photography by Byron Spencer
GEM Magazine 