The Artist Still Known as Spike Fuck

Oscar Schwartz descends deep into the lore of Melbourne’s mythic rock star

Tomorrow night, at the John Curtin Hotel in Carlton, a musician named Spike Fuck will take the stage with a five-piece band to perform new songs after a long hiatus. For most, this news is totally unremarkable. On any given Friday, there are scores of bands with odd names playing grimy venues throughout the inner-north. But for Spike Fuck devotees, the return is hailed with passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand, they say. Surely the second coming of Spike Fuck is at hand.

Why such reverence? The myth of Spike begins almost a decade ago and emanates from a five-song release called The Smackwave EP (2016). This roughly 20-minute long album concerns anguished love, transness, heroin, and recovery. The lyrics are confessional and intense but also plainly-spoken and funny. They are sung in a guttural, tremulous baritone so heavy with emotion that at times it teeters on the edge of cracking up, and yet somehow sustains control and pitch. When you hear this voice for the first time, it is almost impossible not to get swept up in it. “I got one, I got two, I got three friends that died from constant drug use,” Spike sings on “Junkie Logic,” the first track off Smackwave, and you listen, mouth agape, and ask, where is this voice coming from and who does it belong to?

Back in 2016, this voice belonged to a 25-year-old, blonde-mulleted, midriff-baring, post-punk pixie trans girl known as Spike Fuck. She performed her music in venues throughout Melbourne, karaoke-style, up on stage all alone with a backing track, a microphone, and an attitude. She jeered at the audience with bratty disdain, and they loved her for it. 

The city was then still in the melancholic grips of the dole-wave thing. Community radio was broadcasting jangly, saccharine pop songs about Hills Hoists, chamomile tea, and depression in Preston. Meanwhile, the pop stars in America were releasing grandiose, theatrical albums, like Solange’s Seat at the Table and Frank Ocean’s Blonde. The Smackwave EP tapped into a different energy altogether, playing thematically between everyday abjection and high melodrama. Sonically, it echoed the 1980s: Bruce Springsteen, Suicide, a bit of Rowland S. Howard. The chord progressions were simple, but overlaid with gaudy synths and programmed drums. The setting was the streets of inner-city Melbourne, but the themes were eternal rock 'n’ roll. 

Smackwave resonated beyond Melbourne's insular precariat. In 2017, Spike Fuck was “discovered” by a Rick Owens scout, and flown out to Paris for an interview and a photo shoot. The hype intensified and soon Spike Fuck was living the textbook rock star life, flying to Paris, shooting heroin, and fucking with the stars. And then, true to the script, came the downfall: addiction, tragedy, isolation, and finally a complete withdrawal from public life. Rumours abounded. Spike was lost in drugs. Spike had found God. Spike was a priest, chanting in Latin at some remote monastery in Tasmania. 

Spike remained silent but the devotees kept listening to Smackwave over and over. They paid homage in the comments section underneath the few live show recordings available on YouTube. “You saved my life Spike,” they said. “When are you making new music?” Nothing arrived. And so they waited and they waited until finally, earlier this year, Spike Fuck, now 33, announced via Instagram that there was a new album in the works—and the songs would be debuted in two comeback gigs at the Curtin. 

The first, last month, sold out in a couple of minutes. We packed in shoulder to shoulder. “You don’t understand how big of a deal this is,” I heard a guy in his 30s behind me say to his date, who looked to be in her 20s. “Spike is literally a living legend.”

Spike and the band walked out on stage. He (Spike Fuck goes by he/him pronouns now) was wearing black boots, corduroy pants, and a button-up shirt beneath a sweater. There was no mullet, no karaoke, no brattiness. Just a petite guy with a guitar who looked like he might’ve arrived straight from church. He thanked everyone for coming, quietly, with an impish, almost bashful grin. He said it was good to be back. For three years, he couldn’t even pick up a guitar. Then, a few months ago, something came over him, and he wrote ten new songs in quick succession. Spike Fuck began to sing, and everyone went quiet. Some wept. A young woman fainted. The voice was the same.