CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS: PLAYLUNCH
Words by Patrick Staveley
In an era of music where everything seems tried and tested and it’s becoming harder to be unique, Melbourne seven-piece Playlunch has come up with its own niche that continues to gain momentum.
Formed in the early 2020’s, the group rose to fame with songs that played into core memories of Australian culture, including references such as Healthy Harold and the former television program Soupe Opera that aired on ABC.
For their second album, ‘Sex Ed’, which was released in August 2025, the group moved away from nostalgia and addressed modern issues Australians are facing in a humorous manner, including cost of living, the difficulties of the rental market, and aggressive neighbours.
Former AFL star Barry Hall’s hilarious cameo appearance in the band’s video clip for ‘Keith’ went viral, and has become a cult favourite for fans, with some even dressing up as the character at shows.
Futuremag Music spoke to lead singer Liam Bell and drummer Austin Richardson about the latest album, the rise of the band across social media and the music industry, and their recent tour.
FMM: How did the seven of you all meet and form Playlunch?
Liam: So me and Ozzy (Austin) went to school together with Dylan and Michael, who are our bass and keys players. I sort of started cooking up the project in lockdown, so starting to come up with these like really weird funk song ideas and Ozzy was sort of the first person I hit up to be like ‘oh, what do you think of this’ and we were just getting together and were sort of like jamming them. There was like they're just grooves for a really long time, but then I'll go oh, yeah What's gonna happen is we're gonna do this groove and then you're gonna hear the ‘Soupe Opera’ through that chaos for a while. The other three boys, (we) sort of met them through like an ex-girlfriend of mine and they all went to uni together so half the band are high school mates, half the band are uni mates.
FMM: You've carved quite a niche in the Australian music industry where you're just entertaining in a way very few bands could and you're hitting the mark in terms of tapping into shared memories of many Australians who can relate to your music. Even with the ‘Soupe Opera’ in the video clip where you’re wearing these (car rug road) outfits, and then you've got Bananas in Pyjamas in the background. Where do the brains behind all these ideas come from?
Liam: The project really came out of COVID. I think all of us were feeling so desperate to just be able to get back to the music scene and play gigs again. Obviously, being Melbourne boys, we were sort of in more of a lockdown than anyone else in the country was for a longer amount of time. And the idea was…(we) could put on a gig with a new band and the band would be like let's make everything as fun as possible let's just make the most fun gig that people can possibly go to that will make up for lost time and then inevitably sort of like the Australian element of it, and the nostalgic elements of it. They sort of came out of that more than anything. And so it happened quite organically of just being like, oh yeah, what if you had a song where you did like Athletic's Day chants in the middle of it? It was just sort of like…I've never seen that at a gig before. Like that would be really fun if I were an audience member in a gig for that. And then the more that we did that, we sort of realised this is actually a really interesting combination of things. And we would show it to mates and they would really get it and find it really interesting, it would make people laugh a lot even just listening to demos which I think was really promising. That was the year as well that The Wiggles won the Hottest 100 with their cover. So I remember when that happening just, (and thinking) we are onto something… this hunger for this Aussie nostalgic kind of thing going on in the music scene. I wish I could say that we were smart enough to plan it out ahead of time and that we had the beakers and the titration out working out the perfect combination. No, it just kind of happened organically I think.
Austin: Yeah it's really hard when… we've all been in a bunch of bands before playing in the scene for a while and a bunch of different scenes. It's really hard to kind of get people to listen to you and to connect and to kind of understand you…because a lot of these references come from a time before you know everyone had the internet and were all together kind of consuming the same media and so referencing that was a really fun way to be able to bring a whole audience in and be like ‘You remember this thing? and then also here's some really fun music, dance with us.
FMM: When it comes to the songwriting process, who’s pitching in with ideas or memories of certain aspects of life or is there always someone who's driving the direction you guys are heading in?
Liam: Yeah it's interesting, I think this second album has definitely been a lot more collaborative in the sense we've sort of been more established and we've known we've had a clearer idea of what the project actually is and our combined sense of humour as well and in that sense it's sort of this collaborative process (where) everyone's like coming up with ideas and being like ‘oh what if we had song about this’. Even just banter that you have in the tour van where someone says something really funny and I pull out the phone, chuck it in the lyrics ideas notes. In terms of the on the ground songwriting, the actual composing and arranging of everything, that's usually me working in isolation because the music is just very complex, it's quite hard to do that sort of thing collaboratively although I'm sure we'd really like to be able to work out how to do more of that moving forward. But up until this stage it's sort of been me trying to be doing all the writing, but trying to do the writing for something that I know all of us can do together and sort of reflects all of us as a group.
FMM: Given it's the first song I discovered from you guys, I've got to talk about ‘Keith’. I've listened to the song several times but I just went through the lyrics again the other day. I was just reading it in my head and that was making me laugh even more than the song. It's just so funny because I think we all have experienced something like that. How did you get Barry Hall in the video clip? How did that whole thing come together? How did you get in contact with him and was he keen from the get go?
Austin: We had the vision already of what we wanted ‘Keith’ to be, which is big, bald, someone who can look scary on camera, that sort of thing. And so we were kind of running through different options. We're into wrestling and there's a local wrestling company and (tried to) get one of the the wrestlers out of that… but it was hard to make dates line up. We briefly spoke to Broden Kelly (of Aunty Donna fame) through it but that didn't line up and then our manager from the Playlunch account logged in and just shot an absolute Hail Mary to Barry Hall. And he responded, he listened to the song. He's like, ‘yeah, cool, alright. He lives on the Gold Coast. So we had to fly him down. But as soon as our manager said, ‘Oh, I've hit it up Barry Hall’. I was like, ‘Oh, dude, it's so perfect’. And then we saw him in person and it was just better than we could have imagined. He's in such good nick. It was a real stroke of luck.
FMM: What would you say sparked your surge in popularity as a group?
Liam: There was a point back in like 2023 where we had a TikTok get like 200,000 views and we also like 1000 Instagram followers and for us at the time that was like ‘Oh my god, we've hit the big time’ So there's been so many points along the way that we've felt like ‘Oh man this is really us hitting it big’ but definitely I think ‘Station Rat’ coming out a year ago. It's just been absolute insanity.
FMM: Yeah, I feel like I saw it everywhere when it came out, like other just publications sharing it as well was great. So, how was the recent tour you guys went on as well? Which songs do you think got the biggest reaction?
Liam: Obviously ‘Keith’ was a very special moment every night. There's clearly a lot of people at shows who came out, there was loads and loads of die-hard fans. I think we still get very surprised by our fan base especially now that they've grown so much in the last six months or so. We got to Adelaide which was the first leg of the first gig of the tour and we did this meet and greet beforehand and there were people rocking up in costume like dressed as ‘Keith’ like rocking up in bald caps with like you know sing what's on but not only that like we've got this song about like Harold the giraffe on the new record there are people rocking up and out costumes people sometimes a real estate agent like some like that like and and people like you know, we've all got these like like bracelets and like fans we so many like really consistent kind of like in jokes and stuff that like our fans have just sort of like invented out like that we haven't even that we didn't even start, you know that is like such a such a like surreal thing to like go from place to place and and sort of connection. I don't know. I feel like we're both still processing it. How do you feel about it, Ozzy?
Austin: Yeah, it's a really funny one, like it's just so wild, you get very imposter syndrome-y. Playing so much music where people are uninterested. So it's really cool, it's validating. I think in terms of specific songs that people like, I think Harold really surprised me. Like every time Harold would have them, it would go off. I think ‘Le Snak’ as well is another one, that's creeping up on people. And then all the singles, and especially ‘Keith’ but you know the classics like Hornbag and Soupe Opera as well, and it's also hard for me to tell because I'm at the back of the band like right at the back i've got sunglasses on that fog up straight away as soon as I play because i get really sweaty so for most of the shows i can't f**king see anything so I have no idea what people are enjoying it to be honest I'm just trying to hit the drums.
FMM: ‘Real Estate App’ as well, is that a big performer as well? I feel like that's really relevant today.
Liam: It's just this great moment of like everyone in the room just gathering together around like ‘yeah f**k real estate agents’.We tell stories about bad property managers and horror repairs and shit like that and then when we play the track, there's this moment in the middle where we get the crowd to sing (John Williamson’s) ‘Home Among the Gum Trees before singing the final chorus of the track and it's just one of those crazy moments where you write the song in isolation, you write it by yourself just sort of expressing your own frustration about this particular thing but then all of a sudden you're in these rooms of like a thousand people and all of them are singing this chorus about just being over this situation. I felt like we're leading some kind of revolution or something knowing that we're not going to make a single dent in the housing crisis issue, but it's just really cool. It's really cool, especially with a song just picturing all the amount of times throughout the years that we have just been in that situation like every single one of us just like stuck in these shitty inspections with shitty real estate agents that don't give a f**k about you to just have this moment like ‘Oh, yeah, we're not alone in that experience’.
FMM: Have you guys had much chat as a whole band about what direction you guys want to go in the future?
Liam: I think this album... reached this great cult following around the country. That first record was definitely like a lot more primary school than we initially had intended for it to turn out. It was great to see that it worked, but we also felt a little bit like we could keep doing this for a while, but. The goal with this most recent album was we really want to try and write songs and go into subject matter that isn't necessarily nostalgic or doesn't have to reference this school-age thing and it's kind of been great because case in point, ‘Real Estate App’...like all of the singles - none of them are nostalgia based songs at all. They're very much about current, modern day, Aussie stuff. And yeah, we were super ambitious about what we wanted to do artistically. We sort of want to make sure that we're just not pigeon-holed into anything at all. You know, there are rock songs on this latest record, there are hip hop songs, sort of 2000s R&B kind of songs. We try not to be pinned down on any certain sonic identity. Going international is sort of what we're wanting to do next. We're sort of trying to look at maybe a trip to the US in the coming year. We could be wrong about it, it could be like a massive failure but we kind of feel like Americans love the whole Aussie thing. We're keen to get over there to see how do people from other countries react to this?