Spacejunk: Stars In Their Eyes.

Spacejunk play Ric’s on Wednesday night

Spacejunk were a fabulous local band who made crunchy guitar pop music with tantalizing touches of art rock and glam. And they’re back. 

The group broke up in 2000, with lead singer/guitarist Owen Jolly and drummer Ryan Argent moving on to Jus with bassist Aleathea Monsour. But, with original bass player/singer Campbell ‘Missy’ Misfeld back on board, Spacejunk have returned.

“Campbell and I have been living in the same house since half way through last year,” says Owen.

“I hadn’t been writing songs and wasn’t going to play in a band ever again,” Missy recalls. “When Jus was practicing, I used to help out with arrangements which was just fun, I had no intention of joining the band. Then this year, I wrote some new songs and collaborated with Owen on some songs as well."

“Then in one week, we’d written six new songs,” adds Owen. “Aleathea left, then Missy joined the band to play bass and we immediately realised it was the original Spacejunk line-up again!”

And then Spacejunk were reborn. Which is quite ace timing, according to Owen, because the boys are at the peak of their writing/performing powers.

“The stuff we’ve been coming up with are like everything good about our first EP stylewise. Simple short, sweet, punky, poppy, glammy tunes. It’s the classic Spacejunk sound.”

“We’ve kind of abandoned the meandering songs,” says Missy. “Our songs are to-the-point and good from start to finish, even if it takes only a couple of minutes. The songs don’t go anywhere they don’t need to go.”

And work is about to start on their comeback recording, an EP called Teammates In Mankind’s Greatest Adventure. Mad title. Please explain.

“It comes from a National Geographic poster of all the astronauts who played a role in lunar missions,” Owen says. Visitors to the boys’ home will find said poster adorning the wall of their entrance hall. 

The return of Spacejunk sees a far more collaborative relationship between Owen and Missy, who previously wrote mostly alone.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever properly collaborated on songs,” says Owen. “Between us, we can nut out a good song. Overall, I’ve not been happy with the songs I’ve come up with over the last couple of years. But it’s definitely improved from writing with Campbell. We can put two minds onto a song and we have similar but sufficiently different songwriting styles.”

“There’s one new song entitled Lightning Operator, which is strange because the verse sounds really Owen, even though I wrote it, and the chorus which Owen wrote sounds a lot like me!” adds Missy. 

The adventure continues. Prepare for ignition.