Australian pop rock outfit Short Stack recently released their third studio album, “Homecoming.” We sat down for a virtual talk with the band.
First, let me tell you: I love the album. I was at the office when I first heard it and couldn’t physically restrain a little desk-chair-wiggle. In the ideal world, where would your listeners be listening to this album and what would their reaction be? Beach partying? Club dancing? Park picknicking? Road tripping? What’s the ideal scenario?
Thank you! I think it’s definitely got a house party kinda vibe. The songs are very fun and loud, the perfect soundtrack for throwing away all your inhibitions and doing something a bit crazy.
As a music reviewer, I often try to describe a band’s sound without comparison to any other musical groups. It’s hard. So I’m going to ask you to do it. How do you describe your music and its effect?
I don’t really know. We have so many influences from Black Sabbath to Biggie. We recorded this album in London with Chris Kimsey who has worked with the Rolling Stones, so that gritty, guitar driven UK sound is definitely something we had at the front of our minds.
OK, with that second question out of the way, who would you say your main musical influences are?
We grew up listening to 90s punk. So Nofx, Blink, Green Day, Rancid, that kind of thing, but now it really is everything. Especially when somebody is doing something exciting in the rock community in definitely drawn to that.
Everyone loves a good how-did-you-meet story. How did you guys come together? Can you talk a little bit about your two-year break, how you reunited and why your sound shifted from pop to rock?
We met on a train in highschool & shared the same taste in music. We went from swapping mix CDs to being like “hey let’s start a band!”. We broke up because we felt we had done everything we wanted to do with the band, and felt creatively there was nothing at that particular time we wanted to say. When a few years passed we got back together and our energy was renewed. We had so much new found passion and it was really cool we got a second chance.
Can you talk a little about your music-making process? Do the lyrics come first? The beat? Is it collaborative? Or do you all play pretty separate roles?
I usually come up with an idea and we work on it in Bradies studio. It’s very much a collaboration between the three of us. One of our favourite songs we wrote was written in the studio in London, so we do enjoy changing it up a bit.
What is the one question you wish interviewers asked you, and what is the answer to that question?
Haha I love surfing. I surf every day, so if we just chatted about that I’d be stoked. Or Batman, we’re huge comic fans, Batman is my religion haha.