It might be somewhat tough for future generations to look back and pinpoint an exact date for when the recent and insurmountable period of general unpleasantness began to taper off, but we offer them a suggestion: Tuesday, the 2nd of March, the day that Short Stack returned to our headphones and speakers.
To mark their long-awaited return to the fold, Blunt Magazine sat down with Short Stack members Shaun Diviney (lead vocals, guitar), Andy Clemmensen (bass, backing vocals) and Bradie Webb (drums) to talk through the “Then” and the “Now” for a two part series.
Though Australia would become chief international exporters of alternative music throughout the last decade, very few bands were as talismanic to their fans as Short Stack.
Releasing their groundbreaking album Stack Is The New Black in 2009, the outfit would achieve cult success seemingly in the blink of an eye (though the day ones will know that it was actually the result of a solid grind). In one fell swoop, the trio had combined the alternative look – sweeping fringes and piercings in teased svelte packaging – with the alternative sound. And we liked what we saw and heard.
With their follow-up record, 2010’s This Is Bat Country, Short Stack would inarguably achieve commercial success, finding themselves at the pointy end of charts and conversations normally reserved for the Ed Sheerans of the world. For the first time ever, “the scene” was being counted.
Then, as we would learn speaking with the group, things changed, but not necessarily for the better. In Part 1, “Then”, we navigate through the band’s rapid rise to the top, and ask why, some years after the release of album number two, the wheels started to come off.
