Now, they’re headed home to play their biggest rooms to date. With more than 60 shows over the past three months under their belts, DMA’S are bound to remind excited crowds exactly what all the fuss is about.
While DMA’S are known for being constantly cool, calm and collected both onstage and off, their crowds tell a completely different story. Currently touring the UK, guitarist Johnny Took starts his post-show morning in typical Australian fashion.
“I’m pretty hungover, I woke up five minutes ago,” says Took. “If some ridiculous shit comes out of my mouth, you’ll know why. Yesterday was bloody beautiful here; Sheffield is like an old steel town. We played a gig last night – it was crazy. The Brits get into it pretty hectic, they get real rowdy at shows. Most of the time when we’re touring it’s a Tuesday night or something, we play a really good show and by the time we’ve finished and packed everything up there isn’t much to do. But last night was good.”
Straight from the streets of Sydney, Took, along with Tommy O’Dell (vocals) and Matt Mason (guitarist) have clearly attained a committed European following.
“We don’t fucking hide it – we love that ‘90s Britpop era and all of the bands that came out of it,” he says. “The crowds here in the UK don’t give a fuck that we’re from Australian or from a long way away; they just like the tunes and the kickarse nights. It’s cool to be so far away from home and get that response. To be honest, when it comes to building a career I think the UK has been one of our strongest audiences, it’s been amazing to us.”
In the past two years, DMA’S and their six-piece live setup have seen audiences across the globe. Such exposure has led to them appearing on various 2016 festival bills including Splendour In The Grass, Fuji Rock, Pukkelpop and most recently, Reading and Leeds. Nevertheless, such relentless touring has the local group looking forward to returning to home soil and focusing on their next release.
“In February, I was so keen,” says Took. “I was so up for it, but recently, to be honest, I’ve just been looking forward to getting home. I miss not having a home; I miss not having a bedroom, somewhere to dump my shit. Little stuff like that, organised pandemonium. I’m also looking forward to not having to see the five other heads I have to see every day. That’s going to be a real privilege.
“But in all seriousness, I think we’re going to get a studio somewhere. I got evicted from my house where we recorded the album so I haven’t had a studio for about a year. I got evicted on the night of the King Street Crawl, which happened the weekend we came back. I forgot about late night trading; we had a DMA’S rehearsal in my bedroom and it was so loud. There’s a hairdresser underneath us and he was a proper real bad dude.”
In addition to relocating to a new recording space, the joint songwriters are eager to continue their production exploration. Took talks us through their intrigue with fusing electronic elements and their much-admired acoustic melodies.
“We’ve got so many old songs that are probably in a similar vein to what we are doing now but could be changed production wise,” he says. “We’ve got so many new ideas but we just need to be home for long enough to have the time to experiment with it. We’ve been experimenting with beats, bringing electronic vibes into some of the tunes and doing something a little bit different within the whole field. With Tommy, he can bring any melody you wanted him to. He’s the kind of person that you could play a beat and he could bring a straight-up boom, huge melody on top of it without even thinking. It’s that kind of vibe that I think we will bring to the next album, or maybe the third, depends on how we go.
“With Hills End, all the songs were quite instant to make. I think we’ll probably make the next album more of an experience. We were really happy with Hills End and the vibe it’s got; it’s a bit vulnerable, recording an LP in your bedroom means that it sounds a bit shit but that’s kind of cool. But I think we’ll have to step it up for the next album.”
Before settling into their follow-up record, DMA’S are set to take Hills End to the Australian stage. A consistently great live show, the band proves that practice makes perfect.
“There are these little increments that band’s improve by that you can’t get from being in a rehearsal studio for nine hours, you can only do it by playing 60 gigs in two or three months,” says Took. “Now we’re at that point with our one hour set, I’m looking forward to getting home and adding a few different songs to it. We’re going to play Step Up The Morphine, we were considering doing it acoustically but we decided to hold it off for the October tour. I’ve wanted to play it for ages, it’s one of our favourites and we get a lot of requests for it.”
Supporting the Sydney unit on their tour next month are none other than Adelaide’s Bad//Dreems. The two bands were brought together after a chance musical meeting in New York.
“It was about a year and a half ago during the CMJ Music Marathon,” says Took. “We were doing an industry thing in Midtown. We played our acoustic set and Bad//Dreems got up and hadn’t brought enough acoustics so they asked if they could borrow my guitar. They were playing and all of a sudden Mason just walks onto the stage. There was a grand piano there and he had learnt My Only Friend a week before by chance, so he rocked up and just started playing it with them.”
After smashing their set earlier this year at Splendour In The Grass, it’s no surprise that DMA’S will also be heading to Falls Music & Arts Festival this New Years. Took shares his experience with the close knit community tied to the Australian festival circuit.
“Normally when we play festivals in Australia we’ll have mates playing it too,” he says. “Splendour was almost weird, we were hanging out at the VIP behind the main stage and I felt like I was just hanging out at the local pub back in Sydney. We had heaps of mates there and my little brother was up there too. We all play in different bands so there were the guys from The Creases, The Preatures and the Sticky lads.”
Regardless of their expanding influence on the Australian and international music scene, Took assures loyal listeners that when looking to the future, the band’s sound and songwriting will remain true to the heart of DMA’S.
“When you think of the songs that have gone well for you as a band, a majority of them were written before the band did well. That’s one thing we are going to remember when we are finishing up the second or third album, that there is certain candour to those early songs that I think people found endearing. I think artists can lose the plot a little bit when they stop writing for themselves and start writing for an audience, or what they think the audience wants.”
BY PHOEBE ROBERTSON
