“We’ll be on top of the world one minute and down in the doldrums the next,” Coop says jokingly about the combustible elements within the group. The mood swings of the new project, from the venom of The Monkeys Are Coming to the slow melancholy vibe of Pull Out My Insides, are “a very good representation of the whole band.” The relationship between Coop, fellow co-founder/lead singer James Rushent, drummer Rob Bloomfield, and guitarists Matty Derham and Chloe Duveaux sounds very much the “soap opera,” that he describes.
How did these musical maniacs all first get together? “Me and James used to run soundsystems at parties, and I used to borrow gear off him. We became good friends and he ended moving in with me.” Unlike the artistically inclined Rushent, Coop had no plans to become a songwriter, having more interest in remaining a DJ. “Over a long weekend it just kind of evolved, he thought we might as well try something together and yeah, we wrote three tracks in one weekend. Then the next week we had like four or five major labels bashing down our door trying to sign us. It was all very quick.” Much like the result of listening to their tunes the group’s formation is a case of sudden impact. “We ended up going down to a pub and our mate was a drummer. We asked him if he was interested in touring with us and he said ‘yeah, I’ll quit my job’, so he quit his job that day pretty much and that was it, we were on tour,” he chuckles. “We had a record deal before the band was formed.”
Making their return down under for Splendour In The Grass and some sideshows, after blowing audiences away last year, the good ship DITOYY will also be touching down in the good ol’ US of A towards the end of the year. “I think we’re definitely a lot more popular abroad than we are in the UK,” the keyboardist observes. “In the UK there’s a very weird thing going on, I’m not sure if it’s happening in Australia. The stuff the radio’s playing is increasingly becoming more and more the same [Lady Gaga or whatever]. You don’t hear any indie during the day. I know you guys have Triple J, who champion alternative music, but over here everyone just listens to the same radio stations, no one is really switching to digital radio.” Wishing for a return to earlier times, he says “what was great about radio when it first really hit was that you’d hear new bands all the time. Now you’re just hearing the same fuckin’ five records all day.” With the radio monopoly in their homeland, as described by Coop, it was the perfect time for the group to venture out on their own.
In the ensuing craziness of dropping Virgin as their label, the crew amassed a large catalogue of unreleased material. “We had it finished a good year ago,” Dan says of some of the new album. Admitting that “some of it’s quite old,” a fresh album may not be too far off. “We’re looking to write new material pretty soon.” It was all about “just more artistic freedom,” he affirms. “Basically the majors are just panicking so much, they just wanted stuff that’s very commercial, stuff that can get played on the radio. It’s fine if you want to do that but we’re not that kind of band. We would just feel a bit fake trying to make music like that and perform it. We wanted to make an album that we liked and thought other people might like. Not necessarily the most commercial album in the world.” Despite the pressure many bands would feel to live up to a successful first album, Coop says the process was “pretty much the same, it was a lot of hard work.” Never 100% happy with their own efforts, he says “we’re always that close, we’re always looking for the perfect song or the perfect blend of a rock and dance track, that’ll never be there. So yeah I think we’re very hard on ourselves.”
