This week’s whole Counter Culture column is dedicated to Spunk Records, the incredible Australian indie label who this week have announced they’ll be wrapping up operations mid-year.
The beginning of my relationship with Spunk was as a fan in the early 2000’s. My friends and I would share releases with each other, quality international releases that were made available in Australia and the label on the back of basically all of them was Spunk. Incredible records from Mogwai, Bonnie Prince Billy, M Ward and many more. When we first opened Music Farmers in late 2004, it timed with an incredible run of releases Spunk had released in Australia, that would sound track the early years of the shop. The incredible Arcade Fire debut album Funeral, the indie pop masterpiece from Sufjan Stevens Illinois, the groundbreaking Antony & the Johnsons album I Am A Bird Now, the genre defying Animal Collective release Feels. And there was more, Jens Lekman, Belle & Sebastian, Explosions In The Sky. A real who’s who of the indie music world. Around this time Spunk also started to bring some local artists into the catalogue, the likes of Holly Throsby and Machine Translations.
Bonnie Prince Billy at Music Farmers. Photo by Aaron Hughes.
At this point I’d never met co-founder/owner of the label Aaron Curnow (AC), but a few years into heavily playing Spunk releases in the store, AC reached out to say he’d just moved to the area. We’d catch up randomly at shows to talk music biz stuff and football. I remember one of those early shows was when Spunk was launching the Singles Club vinyl and he advised me to come along to the local launch at the Heritage Hotel so see some of his new signings. First up were a great Adelaide band called Leader Cheetah who really should have reached greater heights but have the legacy of a great album I’d highly recommend going back to give a listen to. The headliner that night were a new collective from Townsville called The Middle East, they’d just released a really amazing single called Blood, and despite a pretty small turn out they put on an epic show. Thankfully they would go on to get some of the acclaim they deserved, and they are returning for the Spunk finale show at the Opera House in May.
Around 2011, AC was running a surf/record store in Stanwell Park called Sea Notes and I’d often drop by, talk music, sometimes football and make plans to put on shows together, both in stores at the shop as well as co-promoting some local shows around the coal coast (as it has become known, I think AC was one of the earliest to refer to the area as that). One day at Sea Notes he played me a new signing from a New Zealand that he was about to release. The band was called Unknown Mortal Orchestra and the first track I hear was Ffunny Ffriends, it was an incredible track and we spoke about putting on a show for them down here when they came to Australia. It took a year or so but it became our first co-present show. It happened on New Years Day 2013, alongside Unknown Mortal Orchestra the line up also featured Shining Bird playing their second ever show.
A couple of Music Farmers/Spunk shows. Design by Simon Dalla Pozza.
Also around this time, AC reached out to say that Bonnie Prince Billy had a day off on his tour and wanted to do a free show down this way near the beach. We were in the Crown Lane warehouse space at this time (where Kneading Ruby is now) and he suggested we do an instore there, so we did. Bonnie Prince Billy had played the Opera House the night before and was unable to announce the instore, so it became Emma Russack (who also played) + special international Spunk Records guest. People got the hint and packed out the place, Bonnie Prince Billy had originally planned to do just a solo show but his band (who at the time included Angel Olsen) wanted to play as well, so it became a full band set. The other plan was to just play 3 or 4 songs but they really got in the vibe of it and played for over an hour, the parting words from them was something like “we played the Opera House last night but this is much better”. Spunk instores became a regular thing over the years with artists such as Bored Nothing, The Ocean Party, Tiny Ruins, Palms, Jordon Ireland and others all dropping by for shows.
In 2013 I began managing Shining Bird and upon hearing the final mixes of their debut album Leisure Coast I thought Spunk would be the perfect home for the band so I sent them along to Aaron as they'd already played that New Years Day show we'd just co-promoted. Luckily he liked them and agreed to put out the album, it would be the beginning of a long-term relationship between the label and band that continues to today and will run up until the end of Spunk with the release of the fourth album in June.
Shining Bird at the Curnow's front yard. Photo by Aaron Hughes.
There are many highlights from the Shining Bird/Spunk Records relationship so I’ll just share a couple of favourites here. The first one was this week’s feature image which was taken by Aaron Hughes when Shining Bird played a show in the front yard of the Curnow family home, from memory it was Aaron’s birthday. The photo encapsulates so much about what Spunk Records is. The next memory is in 2016 when the band were putting out their second album Black Opal. We had this idea of doing a tour on release week that started here and finishing up in the centre of Australia at Uluru. We put Shining Bird’s agent Beau to work and he came up with an incredible run that took the band through all sorts of strange country towns across NSW, SA and the NT, ending up with a show at Uluru. The Curnow family all joined us for the NT leg of the trip and it was a really memorable week of travel and shows.
Aaron, Shining Bird and myself at Uluru. Photo by Ricci Quirke.
Wombarra Bowling Club became a little bit of a hang for us around this time as well and the idea to put some shows on there moved into action. Aaron alongside James Kates from Shining Bird started putting on the Coalchella events which I’d jump I to help with, and then there were some Spunk co-promoted shows that happened outside of that. One incredible evening was when AC was bringing one of the new Spunk international signings to town. The band was Big Thief and it is crazy now to think back to watching them play to 100 people at a little Bowlo in the northern suburbs of Wollongong. Then there was also this stacked line up below featuring Cass McCombs on a nice and chilled Tuesday night!
A Spunk/Music Farmers/Yours & Owls show at the Bowlo. Design by Simon Dalla Pozza.
These are just a handful of stories of my interactions with Spunk and there are hundreds, if not thousands of people across the music world that would have their own great stories and experience with the label. Congratulations on an amazing 25 years to Aaron and all the crew who have worked at Spunk over that time, everyone should get along to celebrate it at the two shows in May, click on the poster at the bottom for tickets.
I've also made a biased playlist featuring favourites from both the international releases licensed for Australia along with their local catalogue, keeping in mind there is just one track from each artist and some releases are not on streaming.
