Short Stack signs to UNFD for reformation

A reformed Short Stack has signed to UNFD for the band’s new single ‘Burn You Down’, released today.

The band emerged last decade with hits including ‘Sway, Sway Baby!’, ‘Sweet December’ and ‘Planets’.

Short Stack’s first albums Stack Is The New Black (2009) and This Is Bat Country (2010) were released via Sunday Morning Records.

Homecoming, released in 2015, came out via Universal Music Australia.

The band announced its reformation last year, however the initial reunion and sold-out tour plans were scuppered by the pandemic.

The tour has since been rescheduled and limited tickets are available here. The band will also play a one-off show this Thursday (March 4) at Crowbar in Sydney. Tickets are available from 12pm (AEDT) today via Oztix.

UNFD’s general manager, Luke Logemann, said the label has long admired the band for the intense fan culture it had built.

“I’ve always admired Short Stack for their ability to build such a loyal and enthusiastic fanbase, and for how unapologetic they were in doing so. That’s always been the ethos of UNFD as a label and our bands, to care about the music and the fans first and approval last,” he said.

“I saw them play Festival Hall over 10 years ago, and I remember being overwhelmed by how passionately the fans sang every word back at them. They wrote huge bangers that you could never get out of your head, even if some people didn’t want to admit it. The best thing is, all of that still rings true – they still have crazy fans, they still sell out venues and they still write huge bangers. Based on how good the new material is, I reckon they’ll be doing this long into the future as well.”

Short Stack’s vocalist Shaun Diviney said everything about how the band approached round three was different.

“Where we used to find a lot of pressure to deliver something specific, we approached this with the thought that this is our chance to be the band we’ve always wanted to be,” he said.

“I think a lot of bands at the time when we first broke out were put together by labels and a lot of people threw us in that basket, but we were just a bunch of dudes that went to high school together and played Blink covers and it snowballed from there,” he added.

“To go back to our roots now and really just strip things back and play together in a room was really important to us. The reason we broke up was that it just wasn’t fun… It’s been a fair chunk of time now, so coming back finds us in a different stage of life with a different idea about what we want out of music.”

The goal, he said, is to have fun again.

“At one point we were one of the biggest bands in the country, you know we’ve done so many things that you can’t really top, so our goal is really just to do something that we believe in and have fun doing it.”

He said ‘Burn You Down’ reflected this – and the band’s breakdown and rebuild – as well as offering up observations about the world around them.

“‘Burn You Down’ is about the duality of being young and feeling both indestructible and fragile at the same time,” he said. “I don’t think the world needs another happy pop song at the moment, because I don’t think the world is a happy place at the moment. This song comes from a place of anger and destruction, about wanting to tear something down and begin again.”