The Jungle Giants

To live in the world of The Jungle Giants, you really have to live in Sam Hales’ head. That’s usually a riotous place to be; slammed full of big dance tunes, multiple bands and electric live shows all over the world.

The Jungle Giants have been at it for such a long time — fifteen years, on the cusp of five albums — that it’s hard to imagine them ever not being part of Australia’s global vanguard. But when you are the band — in the most Kevin Parker sense of the word — and the world as you know it starts falling to pieces, the music inside of your head might start to sound a little different. That is, if you’re even hearing music at all.

Experiencing Feelings of Joy is an apt title not only for the listener, but its creator. Careening from crushing personal loss to hopeful exuberance, it’s an album Sam Hales could only write after thinking he’d never be able to write again.

By mid-2022 the cracks were starting to show. “There were a couple years there where my accountant told me that I'd done more shows than there were days in the year,” he laughs. He had arguably reached a creative apex — playing in and writing hits for two globetrotting dance bands simultaneously, with the second of these, Confidence Man, booked to play Glastonbury. He was also engaged to their singer after a ten-year artistic and romantic relationship. Then, in classic Hales fashion, everything happened all at once.

In the space of only a few months he tore up his leg in a jetski accident and was confined to a hospital bed, played Glastonbury on crutches after intense rehab, split up with his fiance and parted ways with Confidence Man. “I had to reform what my life was,” he explains. “In all honesty, I experienced a lot of depression over that period because unfortunately I’m one of those people who process things on delay.” Back in Australia he found himself floundering for the first time.

He hit writer's block, entered therapy and enrolled in The Artist’s Way, a 12-week creative program that helped him understand what was blocking his ability to make music. “I had to dig. I had to really bring up these emotions, so that I could start writing these sad, hopeful or joyous songs. When I was just making a dance banger, I felt reasonably capable. But it didn't feel good. It didn't feel like it was about what was in my heart or head. These are songs that were about the ending of my engagement. About loss, missing my partner.”

Things you may not know about Sam Hales: he was a competition-winning flautist at school; he was raised by a single Irish mother and turned to music partially to escape her abusive ex-husband; he adopted his trademark falsetto after hearing Bon Iver on the radio; and he curates mini-rave listening sessions for his band “with laser lights and smoke machines” once he’s finished an album.

Experiencing Feelings of Joy is different from his past work. It’s the music he wrote after overcoming one of the darkest periods of his life — the best music he says he’s written, and the longest it’s taken him to make.

The record leans into the idea that the most enduring dancefloor tunes are tinged with melancholy. Tracks mentioned include the thumping earworm “Where Can I Put All My Love?” and the 90s acid-jazz–tinged “All The Time In The World.” Hales, who writes from the rhythm section up, commissioned live strings (“they provide this natural emotion, it just sounds like a warm blanket on a cold night”) and opens the record with a song for his mother, the sing-rap opener “Tell Me How It Feels.” The closer, “The World’s Getting Smaller,” is an atypically sparse number that details the slow unravelling of his relationship. “It’s raw, you know? Our careers were building; suddenly you have friends in London, in Paris and the world that used to be impossibly large is actually getting a little closer together. The song asks ‘even though the world's getting smaller, why do you feel so far away?’ As Grace and I built this dream together, we forgot to hold on to each other and we drifted away.”

“With a record big on feelings and even bigger on floor-fillers, Hales has naturally refocused his sights on world domination.” He says, “It just feels good to just be spreading joy and love on a global scale. I'm lucky to have an immigrant mum from Ireland. I grew up being very exposed to an international outlook. Having previously taken on the Americas, Hales now has his sights set on Europe. It's all built off love and obsession. I will never stop making Jungle Giants music; it’s who I am and it's only going to get bigger.”

Whether he’s getting a taco before a show in Mexico or kicking back with friends in Melbourne, Hales is thrilled that he’s managed to tap into something dormant but very real. “I'd overextended and kind of cooked it, but I really found myself. That’s where the joy comes from, having this unwavering hope even after experiencing adversity. This record is what everything culminated in for me, because I'm so in love with it and I'm so addicted to music again.”