Spike Fuck ProfileUsually, when you see an artist in the window of a video interview, they're in regular clothes – their “streets” or “civvies”, if you will. It's not a red carpet walk or an awards show, after all – you can answer questions just as easily in your trackies.
Imagine the surprise, then, when Spike Fuck appears out of nowhere donning a three-piece suit.
He grins when it's acknowledged: “The suit maketh the man,” he crows. “That's something my grandfather used to say. I could improve on this suit, which I'm trying to do, but let's not even go there.”
Can't stay complacent, right? “They'll kill you if you do,” Fuck replies with a wink.
Yes, he will be referred to henceforth as Fuck, by the way – with no known legal name to go off, it's the closest thing we have to a surname for the mysterious Melbourne musician.
The suit maketh the man, and so doth the name – this warped, writhing jangle of electro convulsions and countrified junk couldn't be performed by a John Smith, or a Michael Jones, or a David Young.
Spike Fuck has been synonymous with the sound of weird Australia for a decade – even for the years he was in self-imposed exile from it. Now, there is finally a full-length album attached to the expletive: Evidence.
Dark, confounding and confronting as Fuck's music has ever been, it not only naturally extends from the sound established on the 2017 cult classic The Smackwave EP but doubles down on its abrasive, outsider-art nature with an array of neon-tinged ‘80s synthesis, sun-warped guitars and surrealist lyrical imagery.
Perhaps one of the key reasons it sounds so assured of itself, one could reason, is the fact that it was Fuck's second attempt at making a full-length album. Ever the perfectionist, the singer-songwriter was holed up for two years working on an album entitled Pure O – a project he now frankly describes as “middle-of-the-road and uncaptivating”.
“I wrote it in in a matter of months after not having played music for many years,” says Fuck. “I think it attempted to be a serious, contemplative sort of evolution from Smackwave.
“In reality, the writing was supbar. I think it says a lot more about who I thought I was than my actual reality. I was just not excited about it – and if I'm not excited about it, I don't want anyone else to hear it.”
Evidence, by means of contrast, felt different – not least of all because Fuck literally felt it. “It was totally unexpected, and totally spontaneous,” he says of its creation. “It came from somewhere else, and bypassed my normal filter.
“In the end, I got a record that I love – but also, a record that will expose me for the petulant, resentful, childish person that I think I and many artists are.”
Overseeing the project was Fuck's producer, one Adam Hyde. If that name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps the name Keli Holiday does – yes, they're one and the same, and that's probably raised even more questions than answered them. The barrell-chested A-lister and occasional musician was actually a longtime fan of The Smackwave EP, although the recognition was initially not mutual.
“Here's how out of the loop I was: This time last year, I'd never even heard of Peking Duk,” says Fuck – referring to the EDM duo with which Hyde first made his name in Australian music.
“I had this vague awareness of Keli Holiday as this sort of Dionysian figure – this hairy-chested Australian hero. He reached out and invited me to the NRL grand final, and around that time I came to find out [Hyde's partner] Abbie Chatfield had been posting TikToks dancing to my song Guts and 3:30 Psychosis. I was like, well... this is all very interesting, isn't it.”
The unlikely pair bonded upon meeting in person and bonding over a shared love of Suicide and The Jesus & Mary Chain, leading Hyde to invite Fuck into the studio – if only to see what might happen.
In a series of events described by Fuck as “totally fortuitous,” they emerged some months later with Evidence. Turns out, despite emerging from completely different scenes and making music at polar ends of the sonic spectrum, the pair was able to match one another's freak.
“I kept saying to people around me at the time that I wanted to make a rock & roll record,” says Fuck. “I didn't want to make a soft-rock record that's neither here nor there. I wanted to make something exciting; something weird and gratuitous and and slightly bizarre.
“Because Adam has that EDM production background, he was able to lend this maximalist sensibility to the whole thing. It just evolved, and we barely even had to speak about it.”
Fuck speaks at length about his craft in the half-hour interview, sometimes even to his own chagrin. “I always catch myself being like gosh, will this guy ever shut up?” he laughs. At the same time, he grants that the fact people want to ask about his music means there must be something compelling about it.
On Evidence, Fuck is rarely more compelling than on the verse of Bored to Death – a slow-burning ballad that ruminates on codependency and the complex that develops when you find yourself unable to cope with or without someone. As the instrumentation pares back, Fuck lays it all bare:
Every morning, I wake up and I'm shaking
And I ask God, ‘Oh what do I do?’
But when I look at the sun, it makes me so happy
Because I know one day, it's gonna kill me
And it'll kill you, too
“That's obviously a very vitriolic lyric,” he says. “It's quite vicious. It's nihilistic, which I am in a sense. It's my way of saying, none of this matters. All of this petty bickering, these sharp elbows we throw around all the time, stepping on and over people, all of these petty rivalries, all these petty beefs that last decades... all of these things will come to an end, and none of it's going to matter.
“You have these crazy situations, AI and wars and all these terrible things happening, but nothing changes. No-one ever wakes up. No-one ever comes to; nothing moves forward. I just want to create something that is so sharp and concise and hard-hitting that you can't ignore it.”
Spike Fuck barrels the webcam, his suit hunched and his eyes transfixed.
“Art is a weapon,” he says. “I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
Spike Fuck’s Evidence is out now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
