Jungle Giants Release “Hold My Hand” + Australian Tour Announced.
The Jungle Giants/Photo Credit: Byron Spencer
Today, The Jungle Giants return with their first release in over a year, ‘Hold My Hand’. The foundational taste of the group’s upcoming fifth album, a lot of life has been lived since 2021’s #1 ARIA Chart-topping album Love Signs. In 2024, frontman Sam Hales was thrown headfirst into a phase of self-discovery following the end of a decade-long relationship and a jet-ski accident requiring surgery and two months of recovery. Searching for something that felt real in a period of numbness, ‘Hold My Hand’ was the first time he was able to surface for a breath of air and punctuate an old chapter of his life.
He shared, “These are all beautiful, beautiful, positive memories that changed me for the better. It was just really hard to figure out a way to write about it and figure out a way to define how I felt. This song really helped open up a lot of the writing for the album. All the songs I wrote before weren't feeling real enough. Once I landed on ‘Hold My Hand’, a lot of things fell into place for me. I had this real emotional reaction to it.”
From its inception, Hales wanted ‘Hold My Hand’ to feel like a collage of sounds. Bolstered by a live orchestra and layers upon layers of strings, the instrumentation of the song emotes in a way that words can’t. With a hypnotic, repeating mantra pleading “hold my hand,” you feel Hales’ conversation-like pain and release; an experience that will undoubtedly hit a live audience like a wall of sound and emotion.
“Things have changed, but there's beauty to all this. I would not do anything differently. This is really important to me as an artist, really important to me as a friend, and a lover and everything. ‘Hold My Hand’ really captures the feeling of 10 years with someone, and watching the love just evolve.”
Alongside the single release is the announcement that the band will be taking their legendary live show around Australia in April. Their first capital city tour in over two years, and the only tour they will do this year, will start in Sydney on 4 April, they then head to Newcastle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and finish up in Brunswick Heads on 26 April. Joining them on all Australian dates is triple j J Award 2024 Australian Album of the Year winner Sycco, who will be bringing along extended family and friends for a special DJ set.
With The Jungle Giants’ fifth album arriving later this year, Hales is more emotionally grounded than he has ever been. Hales has spent the past few years travelling the globe with his bandmates, playing major festivals and meeting fans from all over, but the place he needed to settle in for the new album was internal. The Jungle Giants’ genre-agnostic sound has taken a memento from everywhere they’ve been, resulting in a pluralism of alternative pop, dance, rock and experimentalism all informed by the experiences that brought them here.
Built up by Sam Hales (vocalist/ guitarist/ songwriter/ producer), lead guitarist Cesira Aitken, bassist Andrew Dooris and drummer Keelan Bijker, The Jungle Giants have pocketed nearly a billion streams worldwide, have a #1 ARIA-charting album, and toured in front of adoring fans globally. Grateful and centred, the upcoming album zooms in on the matters of the heart.
'HOLD MY HAND' – OUT NOW
BUY/STREAM HERE
