05 October 2010
For every gaggle of hysteric tween girls obsessed with central coast trio Short Stack, there’s at least one website, Facebook group or MySpace page dedicated to hating on the pop-rockers.
Frontman Shaun Diviney is well aware his band isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but with their new album This Is Bat Country out next month and a brand new sound, he’s got more important things on his mind.
“[The haters] were a problem we thought about for a while. We sort of dwelled on it a bit too much because no one wants to be disliked," he tells TMN. "When we first came out I was 18 years old. Being 18 years old and having pages on Facebook that people hate me it sort of puts you down a little bit.
“Now I laugh at it because it’s interesting to go on the websites and read stuff that say ‘I hate you’, ‘die’. I looked up this guy and he was 24, divorced, three kids and I was like 'yeah it sucks to be me hey buddy,'” he says with the last laugh.
When Diviney speaks to TMN, the band (Diviney, bassist Andy Clemmensen and drummer Bradie Webb) are in the midst of an 11-day signing streak, hitting up every Sanity store across Australia to promote their lead single Planets. The shrieking youths were out in droves and the band's drummer was almost abducted.
“Someone handcuffed themselves to Bradie. I think it was a girl but I can’t remember, it might have been a boy,” laughs Diviney.
Given the obvious immaturity of Short Stack’s fan-base, the boys had a hard time when it came time to write This Is Bat Country. They felt pressure to replicate the first album's success but didn’t exactly want to sing about princesses anymore.
“When I wrote the last one, I was only 17 years old so you don't expect to be playing those songs for more than two weeks,” explains Diviney.
The sophomore album has a more adult theme with the boys taking inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson’s classic novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. For them, it's not about the copious drug use and consequential hallucinations in the book; it’s more a social commentary on the American dream.
“There are some things which continue to appear on the album like the American Dream…It was something that made its way onto the album subconsciously, something that we were really surprised at in the end. So we’re following the Thompson thing, the American dream,” he says.
It's an interesting theme for three boys from Budgewoi, a small town just north of Sydney, but Diviney assures us there are obvious parallels between the two.
“Budgewoi's quite a small beach town so you get the white picket fence, you get married at 25, and we sort of broke the mould I guess, because we did something a little bit different, “ Diviney beams.
Something different is also what Short Stack wanted to do on This Is Bat Country. In comparison to last year's chart-topping debut albumStack Is The New Black, the new material promises to farewell the whiney pop hooks and welcome a more retro, raw sound.
“It’s really ‘rocky’ and it’s got a lot of balls. Then again we did do a lot of the Queen stuff so it has that Queen style harmony but it has the really beefy sort of Billy Idol guitars, so yeah balls in tight jeans.”
According to Diviney, the album also features "so much piano" and strings that were recorded in the Sydney Opera House. “We broke the mould of sticking to the dynamic of the drums, bass and guitar. As soon as we got in there we were like fuck’n yeah this sounds so good so we ended up having them on six tracks,” says Diviney.
Short Stack are mindful the new album may not win over the many haters still clogging up the search engines, but they're more concerned with winning over the hearts and minds of their listeners.
"We want our message to be that we’re kids from small towns. We’re not the most interesting people in the world but we believe in ourselves and we want the kids to believe in themselves as well because night after night, we find ourselves playing shows to people in small towns that we were similar to," he says. "If we can give them the push that they can follow their dreams, whether that’s music or whatever that’s cool, 'cause at the end of the day we can do it so anyone can do it."
This Is Bat Country drops November 12 on iTunes but you can catch them at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards this Friday (October 8) where they'll perform Planets.
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