Short Stack: Beating the backlash

06 April 2011

by Nathan Jolly

“I think we dealt with it back then a lot better than we deal with it now. Then we really didn’t care, but now what we are aiming for is different. I think we’ve kicked it a bit, we don’t get as much shit now. But at the same time I think we’ve grown up.”

Short Stack vocalist and songwriter Shaun Diviney is commenting on the world of hatred that has been directed toward the Central Coast pop punk band over the past few years. As he readily concedes, it is understandable. They came along as the emo fad had all but crashed into shore as a bland parody of itself and a frequent target of vitriol. Short Stack mined the fashion, approximated the angst and wrapped it in a hooky pop punk shell closer to the juvenile blast of Blink 182 or Green Day.

On their debut album, they declared that Stack is the New Black, and for an army of girls fed up with either the vapid pop world or the draining angst of emo, it was an easy transition to made. Their debut album hit number one and armies of high school-aged girls flooded social networking sites, shopping malls and festival halls; this teenage fandom was worlds away from emo’s insular demeanour. Worst than all of this, was the fact that they made it look easy.

“I think a lot of people didn’t realise, because of the Internet, that we did do the hard yards, we didn’t do the pub circuit. I think a lot of people now realise, we did do a fuck-load of shows."

The ‘fuck-load’ of shows was facilitated by ceaseless social networking, inventive booking ideas and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the train timetables between Central Coast and Newcastle.

“When we first started we weren't even 18. We couldn’t play pub gigs. I was sorta the manager; I used to get these shows together and we were playing two, three times a week, it was nuts. Libraries, youth venues, everywhere you can possibly imagine we played it."

Diviney spent the better part of 18 months balancing managing the band, playing in the band and his HSC. Something had to suffer.

“School sorta came second," he laughs. "At that point of my life I had to catch the train everywhere, and it was a pain. But you know, it worked out.”

And how! The band’s second album This is Bat Country crashed into stores barely a year after their ARIA chart topping debut and betrayed a more mature sound. Critics, while hardly effusive, admitted that the band’s sound had developed considerably. The main surprise was that people were surprised. Short Stack had long proven themselves capable of tapping into the youth market (of which they are a part of). Diviney completely owns the stylistic shift, claiming it as both necessary and natural.

“It definitely was a conscious decision on my part. The first album was very teenage influenced, the whole pop-punk movement, Blink 182 and stuff like that. Whereas when this album was being written I was listening to a lot of Queen, which inspired the old school ‘70s guitar licks and lots of multi-layered vocals. It was that and the quest to always stay relevant, which is why there are a lot of electronic elements on this one as well….and yeah, I just grew up,” he laughs.

Not willing to stand still, Diviney is already thinking to the band’s next album. He acknowledges the importance of consistently releasing material, and seems restless to make his next move.

“We have this tour with Good Charlotte coming up and we are going to be on the road for the rest of the year, so I figure I may as well get some writing out of the way.”

Having moved on from his “Queen obsession,” Diviney’s interest has been piqued of late by the new Kanye West record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Naked and Famous’ debut release. “That’s the beauty of being on Universal, I get to go there with a shopping trolley and grab a million CDs,” he laughs. He is, however, realistic as to what influences can make their way into his new record.

"I don’t think those albums will make their way into....” he pauses. “It’s Short Stack, ya know.

“I think the challenge now is," he continues, "we’re kinda stuck in the punk pop genre and it’s going to be hard to consistently up the ante while keeping people happy. It’s hard.”

Comparisons are easily drawn with Silverchair, a young group that threw off their genre-casting to release a series of orchestrated, adult-based albums, amidst an enormous early backlash. Diviney clearly likes this parallel.

“We still need the big Silverchair hit, though,” he considers.

At this rate, there is still plenty of time.

Short Stack tour nationally with Good Charlotte from April 8-15