For more than a decade, The Jungle Giants have ticked almost every box of Australian indie success.
There have been platinum singles, chart-topping albums, increasingly ambitious tours and a growing international audience. They’ve just released their fifth album, Experiencing Feelings of Joy, are at the end of their biggest Australian tour to date, and will head overseas again later this year.
But one thing they haven’t collected along the way? An ARIA Award. It’s a surprising gap in the resume of one of Australian indie music’s biggest bands – but frontman Sam Hales has made his peace with it. Mostly.
“When you first start as a band, you really want it,” Hales tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “But for us, there was a trade-off when we started our career that is invaluable to me now.”
That trade-off, he explains, was independence. The Jungle Giants have released their music through their own label since the beginning, allowing them to retain a level of creative and financial control that Hales now considers central to the band’s story. But he believes it also meant spending much of their career outside the traditional industry machinery that can help put artists in awards conversations.
“We didn’t have a seat at the table,” he says. “We weren’t part of a major label. I do remember having these conversations with my manager, like, ‘Dude, are we ever going to get an ARIA?’ Because that’s the stuff that your mum thinks means you’re getting big.”
Over time, however, other milestones began to carry the weight instead. There were gold and platinum records, increasingly ambitious tours and, crucially, the ability to sustain a career while continuing to make decisions on their own terms.
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“What really counts is making those decisions and sacrifices for your career that are not necessarily awarded,” Hales explains. “Being able to run your own industry, run your own label, or being able to fund your own tours – stuff like this to me is what became the real accolades.”
That doesn’t mean the ARIAs have entirely passed The Jungle Giants by. In fact, “Heavy Hearted”, from 2021’s Love Signs, scored a Song of the Year nomination at the 2020 ceremony. But by then, his perspective had shifted.
“I had given away the idea of having an ARIA,” he says. “At the same time, it is good to get a nod from that part of the industry.”
This year, though, feels a little different. The Jungle Giants are eligible across a number of categories with Experiencing Feelings of Joy, an album made entirely in Australia “from artwork to music, to engineering, to everything,” Hales says. And the return of Best Alternative Album to the ARIA Awards has particularly caught his attention.
“I think it’s awesome that they brought that back because, think about the records in our country that get number one – so many of them are alternative,” he says.
Its return also speaks to a broader shift in an Australian industry where independent artists and labels increasingly occupy territory once dominated by majors. “We are more independent now than we ever have been,” he says. “So I like the way it’s leaning. And I also like the idea of being part of the conversation now where I am in my career. I’ve got more balance in my mindset, and I also know you can have both – both parts can be heavily weighted in your career.”
Hales still considers a genuinely independent act an underdog when it comes to industry recognition.
“The independent rat race goes really, really deep,” he says. “When you are independent, you actually realise how much money goes into different facets – from PR to even just having your name recognised at different tables at different parts of the industry. I think a great underdog story is when an independent, truly independent, band forces their name to be a part of the story. And I do think you have to go in with the mindset that you have to do it yourself because, you know, that’s independent by nature.”
There’s perhaps no better time for The Jungle Giants to enter the conversation than now. Experiencing Feelings of Joy arrived in May following one of the most difficult creative periods of Hales’ life. When Rolling Stone AU/NZ spoke to him upon its release, he detailed the writer’s block and personal upheaval that almost severed his relationship with music entirely.
“I started to learn that music wasn’t the issue, it was myself,” he said at the time. “I’d basically set myself up for failure — music was there, but I had closed the door to it.” The result was arguably The Jungle Giants’ most emotionally exposed record yet, one Hales described as “10 steps on a ladder to joy”.
A few months on from its release, something has shifted again. “I feel just off the bat so much more relaxed, which I didn’t really expect to feel this way,” he says now. “The lead-up to the album, because it was such an insane period getting written – going from writer’s block to building up confidence again, to putting it out – now it’s all… I just feel healed, I guess.”
That feeling has followed the band onto the road. Hales describes their current run – almost 30 shows and The Jungle Giants’ biggest Australian tour yet — as “easily my favourite tour”, with musical director and album co-producer Michael Belsar helping transform their live production.
Where The Jungle Giants were once, in Hales’ words, “four people, rock show, song, finish, start,” the current production is meticulously plotted, from lighting and musical cues to transitions and changes in position on stage. “This album has caused a huge turning point in so many different facets,” Hales says.
Which brings him back to the ARIAs. For all his ambivalence about what awards actually mean for an artist’s career, Hales admits recognition for this particular record would hit differently.
“I think it would,” he says. “Between The Jungle Giants and Confidence Man, over the last 15 years, we’ve had no ARIA between the two of us. There’s seven records, multiple number ones.” But if he did finally get one, Hales already knows where it would go.
“I want it for my mum. That’s the best way to put it,” he says. “I would love to give my mum an ARIA that I won. I wouldn’t really necessarily keep it on my mantelpiece at all. It’s more for my mum to know, you know, all the sacrifices she made. And this is something that she recognises – it’s on the telly, it’s the big thing.”
It carries extra significance given Experiencing Feelings of Joy itself is deeply connected to Hales’ family and upbringing. “A lot of this album is about my mum,” he adds. “And I think, what better poetic justice as an independent man, finally winning one to give one to my mum? That would be a huge moment.”
There is another category Hales quietly has his eye on, too. “I would love a producer nod,” he says. “Since I’ve just been producing the records for ages now… one thing that’d be great for me is to just spread the word that this is self-produced music. I think that’s going to be really cool, and would mean a lot.”
Whether an ARIA finally follows remains to be seen. Hales is no longer measuring The Jungle Giants’ success by trophies, and there is plenty of evidence they never needed one in the first place. Their biggest Australian tour is wrapping up, more international dates await, and Hales sounds more creatively energised than he has in years.
His definition of success now is simpler – and perhaps explains how The Jungle Giants got here without surrendering what made them successful in the first place. “If you’re able to get to the fans you have around the world without losing the merit or complete ownership of your music,” he says, “you’ve nailed it.”
