On The Road (to the supermarket) with Bunchy’s Big Score
It’s been a busy two years for Ōtepoti Art Rock trio turned foursome Bunchy’s Big Score: a debut album, a South Island tour, a dramatic line up change and now, a second full length album Wanda’s Bicycle. Back in June, ahead of the album’s release, I caught up with Jack, Max, Niki and Reef to talk about the group’s past, present and future. With the new album now released upon the world, Bunchy's have turned their sights to the North Island with shows in Auckland on the 16th and 17th of August, and Wellington on the 18th.
On a clear Winter’s night at the start of June we managed to find a time that everyone was free. When trying to find a venue for the interview – because no café is open after 3pm in Dunedin –“why not the supermarket carpark?” I suggest. They all think this is hilarious; I just couldn’t afford petrol that week and needed to go shopping. I was kind of hoping Max would shout my groceries too as a thank you for interviewing them. 1 out of 2 isn’t bad. I’m in the back seat with Niki and Reef, Jack is up the front with Max and it seems like there’s been a mistake with the printing of the CD in regards to who performed which instrument on what track. This doesn’t fill me with confidence for how accurate any of the stories I hear will be in the interview to come.
Seeing Bunchy’s perform live you get a sense of the group's dynamic, and it rings true off stage as well. This is clearly a group who enjoy each other's company and my presence didn’t seem to change anything. Constantly talking over one another, it’s often hard to know where one member's thoughts end and another's begin, and if someone starts talking, but isn’t quite sure where they’re heading, someone else is sure to know. Alongside a non-stop flow of in-jokes and light-hearted ribbings, the energy is high as we roll down the ramp of New World Centre City to kick off this interview.
Photo by Kieran Dodd
Kieran: Thanks for taking the time to sit down and have a chat. Listening to the three singles that have been released already, lyrically and thematically they feel similar to the first album, but they also feel like a bit of a departure in terms of the construction of the songs. With the exception of ‘Oscar Says’, the singles feel a lot tighter in terms of composition… but also perhaps a bit more restrained, a bit less rambunctious even.
Reef: Definitely, I think we set out to write more of a pop album, pretty intentionally with this one, and to not be as wired in places. We wrote the album together more and we actually practiced a lot and workshopped the songs a lot more together… And we’ve played them live for ages as well, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Niki: They’re polished.
Max: Yeah we had to polish them. I feel like we didn’t really polish the first album that much. But yeah this is like a lot more–
N: –because you were kind of writing them as you were recording them on the first album.
M: Yeah, literally that was what was happening, we were just like, doing it off the seat of our pants. So this time, yeah we–
R: –*laughing* that’s not an expression.
M: We rehearsed, like, really intensely before even going into the studio for this, and then like–
N: –we had a vision.
At this point Jack pipes up with an important distinction about the makeup of Bunchy’s Big Score. Mid 2025 saw a big shake up for Bunchy’s with the departure of founding member Hamish Waddell. A few months later the lineup as it is today was formed with the addition of Jack on guitar and Niki on bass.
Jack: There’s also two “we’s”. For the first album it’s just you and Hamish, Niki and I had no involvement.
M: So this is a new family of Bunchy’s Big Score.
K: Do you think that’s affected the process for this new album?
N: Yeah you need to rehearse just that tiny bit more if you have even one other person who doesn’t know what they’re doing… that’s me.
M: Ok, that’s not true.
N: You know you’ve got to get me on the same page right?
M: Well we all have to get on the same page I think, but–
N: –you could improv it a bit more when there were only two melodic instruments.
M: Yeah. That’s true, that’s true. Yeah. That’s true.
There was this reoccurring theme throughout the entire interview, despite the objective oddity of sitting in a car, cramped and sweaty with someone you don’t know all too well asking you pointed and at times I’m sure tired questions, it just felt like a conversation between friends, running down tangents and breaking through any discomfort with a joke or a self-deprecating comment before someone, usually Max, would remember the initial question and steer back towards it. At this point Max brings us to the heart, and main goal of Wanda’s Bicycle.
M: …And you’re right about the distinction with ‘Oscar Says’ because Reef, Hamish and I wrote that song in like, 2024. That’s pretty old. But I think there are still moments of rambunctiousness on album two…
N: ’The Sound and Fury’.
M: Yeah ‘The Sound and Fury’, that’s pretty rambunctious. ‘Bad Things Could Happen’... But it doesn’t permeate through the whole album. You know, there’s moments like ‘You Are a Camera’ or ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’ where it's pretty straightforward, and yeah it’s just–
N: –we’re here to have fun.
M: Yeah we just want to have fun, you know, write some more harmonies and stuff. Yeah, choruses bro. That’s the whole thing: choruses. I think we really tried to send it with having catchy choruses and stuff. There was a little bit of that on the first album but I think it’s kind of buried beneath the proverbial lo-fi rubble. You know you’ve got to dig to find it, whereas it’s right there waiting for you on this new… LP.
K: Do you think the process of how each album was recorded, under quite different circumstances, with different people in a different setting lent itself to how the final product turned out?
J: Yes.
M: Yeah.
…
M: Well, the first album we straight up recorded it in Hamish’s flat where you can hear all the room noise and you can just hear stuff clicking, in a lot of ways really it's a mess, you know? But it was kind of what we were going for. Whereas with this new album, we were in a treated studio, using proper equipment with a proper engineer.
R: And we had a deadline where it had to be finished by. So we didn't muck around as much as we would have.
M: Yeah, we locked in.
K: Was it a less enjoyable experience recording Wanda’s Bicycle, being on the clock?
M: I had a really good experience and I like recording anything. I honestly prefer recording to playing live and I find it a lot of fun, just experimenting with stuff and adding different things and seeing what works. I find it to be quite relaxing to be honest, so I really enjoyed it. I think the fact that we had an engineer meant that there were some sort of boundaries to what we could do, whereas if you were recording by yourself, it feels–
N: –you can waste as much of your own time as you want.
M: Yeah, but really you just get a different end result with different methods.
R: Yeah. I wasn't there for the second week of recording. I was there for the last day… There's a funny story, Niki came out to let me into the studio on the last day of recording, and I came in and Niki was like, “I'm just warning you before you go in, you're way too happy. Like, the mood is bad, and you’ve got to bring it down.”
*all laugh*
K: Why was the mood bad?
N: That was while we were recording ‘I'm Still Your Edge’. Everything just wasn't working. We'd recorded it, like, three different tempos, and we were trying to layer it on top of each other–
M: –yeah, Nick (Roughan) almost wanted us to cut it from the album. It was such a difficult one to record. I think it turned out pretty well and I’m glad it’s on the album. But it was hard to record, and it’s a short song as well.
K: So, you call Bunchy’s Big Score the art rock group from Dunedin. What do you mean by that?
N: Are there any others at the moment?
M: There’s nothing else like Bunchy’s Big Score. Jard posted about the Auckland show and said “you’ve got to come and see Bunchy’s Big Score when they’re up in Auckland, we’ve got nothing like Bunchy’s Big Score in Tāmaki.” That’s true. There’s no other Bunchy’s. There’s only one.
R: Yeah, there’s no other band like us anywhere.
N: There’s no other band that plays good music and plays covers.
K: So you said you set out to make this album more of a pop album, with the choruses, arena sized choruses and all that, and if this trend of palatable commercialisation continues, should we be expecting a Christmas album for album three?
N: You want to right?
M: Oh I think we should write a Christmas song, I think it’d be so funny.
N: No one does that anymore.
R: That’d be really funny.
M: Maybe like a ‘Fairytale of New York’ type of Christmas song. Maybe a Christmas song, I don’t know about an album. A Christmas Double A side perhaps.
R: Should we get Santa to do a verse?
N: Yeah, let’s write him a letter.
*all laughing*
K: Jack, Niki, you both joined Bunchy’s about a year ago. What was it like coming into a band where they've already got an album down… they’ve already got a pretty distinct sound and presence… Was that intimidating at all?
J: I wasn’t too scared–
N: –I was.
J: –The only thing I was nervous about was learning all the covers.
*all laugh*
J: That’s it really, like, I play in a very similar way to Hamish so it was a pretty smooth transition.
K: Who’s better, you or Hamish?
J: Probably Hamish.
This brings me to maybe my favourite thing about Bunchy’s Big Score, they unabashedly wear their heart on their sleeve on and off the stage. They joke and they jest but it’s never mean spirited and it always feels like they’re lifting people up rather than trying to drag them down, which is refreshing.
R: They both bring different things to the band, both of them are good.
M: I think Hamish is a sloppier guitar player, not even in a disrespectful way. It added something different to the band.
R: Hamish was kind of like a second front man for the band. That’s what he brought to the band that was cool I reckon.
M: Well it was like Hamish and I were competing on the stage. Hamish would do all this stuff like piledrive onto the organ, or throw himself off the stage and I remember during those first Bunchy’s gigs Hamish would be like “oh fuck, I can’t get up, I’m so sore right now.”
K: So Bunchy’s has a pretty unique presence in person of course, but also online across social media and the likes, what’s with the reels? Are they a means to an end? Something you have a genuine enjoyment for, or is an unfortunate reality that if you want any sort of reach you have to play these games?
R: I don’t know if anyone else finds them as funny as we do. To us it’s just our inside jokes and how we really talk to each other. So I don’t know, to us it’s really funny, but I don’t actually know how other people feel about it.
M: We’re only releasing them for a select audience. But I think that the expectations of musicians today is pretty unfair and unrealistic to have to write music, do this, get this made… I think musicians have a pretty raw deal today. Aside from the fact that it’s easier than ever to record yourself, but you’ve got to promote yourself, get artwork made, yeah you’ve got to wear a lot of hats… So I think the expectation to have to promote yourself on Instagram is kind of bullshit, and I think it deserves to have the piss taken out of it and not be taken super seriously. But you can have fun with it while taking the piss out of it, and I think actually, as much as people are saying “Max, what are you doing? Crazy with these reels”, I think people connect to someone who is kind of just a regular person in a lot of ways, like not super refined or super curated or anything.
R: For me when I see people on Instagram and bands that are doing really high quality reels, it makes me not respect them. It’s taken away my respect for them as an artist… maybe I’m just a jerk or something.
M: I can definitely see where Reef’s coming from because a lot of the time there’s no personality in that kind of thing and I think, even it’s stupid, or ugly or whatever…
R: Well it seems desperate if you’re like–
M: –that’s not that the Bunchy’s reels aren’t desperate but you know, I think there is–
R: –well I think we’re being openly desperate.
N: I think it’s more emphatic and sincere than desperate.
M: Openly desperate yeah. So it’s up to the audience to decide if they think that’s better or… But yeah like some of them is just me after I’ve had dinner like, ‘oh, I’ll just say something’ but other times we’ll do some at band practice and I think that’s a good and accurate depiction of what it’s like to be in a real independent band, just like bullshit and in-jokes and stuff.
K: Is a lot of what you do just winks and nods to your friends or other people in the scene? How much of what you make is for yourself and how much is for the audience?
N: I think you have to enjoy it first and foremost, or no one else is going to either, right? That joy is contagious even if no one else is understanding the same way that you are.
R: I reckon you’ve got to be friends, I actually reckon if you’re in a band with someone you have to do relationship maintenance with that person. Because you know, music’s way funner when you’re getting along with each other.
N: So like, we fuck.
*all laugh*
R: But no, like I talk to every member of Bunchy’s outside of band practice.
Photo by Ethan Montañer
K: So to close this out, you’ve got your sophomore album coming out soon (Note: at the time of publishing it is out!), you’ve got shows all up and down the country coming up. Looking at the state of the scene, both locally and nationally, how do you feel about where Bunchy’s is at right now?
M: Yeah, I don't know. I think the scene here is growing pretty rapidly and kind of in a way where it’s outgrowing the infrastructure that is there to support it, which is unfortunate. But I think that there's more attention being drawn to that at least and I think we’re in an era where everyone says everything's already been done, so I don't know if there's anything that's super original about what we're doing, but on the other side of the coin, I think that there's always going to be something different about you doing something that's already been done, and I think that people don't pay enough attention to that, or get lost trying to come up with something new just for the sake of trying to be original. Because I think just you being yourself genuinely, is… it's enough, you know, that's original in itself. I mean, I want more people to keep listening to us but, I’ll always be making music, even if no one's listening, you know? I don't know.
J: I’m in it for the money.
N: What money?
M: Of which there’s not much.
R: I’m in it for the men.
J: Yeah, that too.
R: I’m in it for the Oamaru boys.
J: I just wanted to impress all the people from Mosgiel…
K: Hard crowd to impress.
J: I know! Especially the Tullochs… Anyway! No, I like it, it’s good fun. No one else is writing good choruses.
N: In Dunedin certainly not.
R: Need more choruses in Dunedin.
N: Every band that thinks they write pop music can’t write a melody to save their life.
…
J: Yeah, no I think it’s good being in a band that’s so wholeheartedly…
N: –just having fun.
J: Yeah yeah, having fun, not bothering with, like, all the fucking alternative shit… I say as–
N: –it’s all virtue signalling man.
J: Yeah exactly, all these wankers with alternative bands–
M: –like U-No Juno.
J: Like U-No Juno.
After the conversation once again derails, Max quips that I’ll only get a genuine answer out of him, but I disagree. After listening to Bunchy’s riff, and joke, and talk over each other for half an hour straight, I’m left with an impression of a group of people who genuinely love what they do, and genuinely love the people they do it with. As Max starts the car to defog the windows the band leaves me with one final round of wisdom.
M: Listen to the album. Come see us on tour, if this gets published before then.
R: Yeah we’ll be around if anyone wants to hang out, grab a taco.
J: Yeah we are the taco band.
N: Yeah, we’re very approachable.
M: Yeah, we’re pretty normal people I feel.
N: I’m single.
J: You should vote.
Bunchy’s Big Score are playing three shows in the North Island THIS WEEK! Get your tickets below!
Thursday 16 July: Whammy Bar, Auckland as part of the Sweet Treats Punk Night #60, with Boxer Priest & Fork (FREE!)
Friday 17 July: Mt Eden Scout Hall (all ages), Auckland with Slow Rage & Community Treatment Order
Saturday 18 July: Moon, Wellington with Horn & Ollie Bunny
Find Wanda’s Bicycle and other music from Bunchy’s Big Score here!
All carpark photos by Kieran Dodd, live photos by Ethan Montañer.