DMA’s frontman Tommy O’Dell spoke to Forge recently about their new, fourth album ‘How Many Dreams’, the future of live music and what’s next for the Aussie rockers.
You’ve spoken about working with Stuart Price on ‘The Glow’ and how he helped blend your original rock sound with more electronic and dance influences, obviously you’ve worked with him on ‘How Many Dreams’ but how have you found working with Konstantin Kersting and production royalty Rich Costey?
Yeah it’s been great, we worked with Stuart and Rich in London and laid down the foundations of the record there, and when we got back we kind of just added the finishing touches with konstantin we had a bit of extra time to go through the tunes. We made some adjustments and changed some lyrics, I redid some vocal takes and added the final touches in Sydney. it really complemented the songs, and I really like how it turned out, we’ve never used so many producers in our music so that’s pretty cool
There’s some strong dance and electronic elements, there’s our rock n roll and ballad-y stuff we’ve always traditionally done and then there’s also more pop hi-fi sensibilities we’ve put in that you can hear on tracks like forever and Thursdays the weekend, and we found that pop sensibility fun to work on. I feel this album has a good sense of attitude, it took the longest out of all the records we’ve done because we had a break when we got back from London after a long tour and being in the studio for two weeks and we needed to take a step back, once we did that it all came together and I’m quite proud of this record, it’s got like unreal beautiful tunes like dear future which is special to me.
Johnny said on the topic of ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s the weekend’, that “we’ve all thought it, we’ve all felt it”, and that the song “is about letting go of the things that weigh us down and embracing the future with a sense of optimism, stepping in the ‘right light in the dark times’.”
On the subject of seeing the (pardon the pun) silver linings in dark clouds, and with this being the first album you’ve written since the pandemic, how much of an influence did it and the lockdowns it brought have on this album?
Quite a lot, we didn’t want people to listen to it and say ‘that’s a lockdown record’ we wanted to, like johnny said, have a sense of optimism to it and we didn’t want to take people back to that time when they listen to it, and now the albums coming out it feels like a long time ago we were all in lockdown so I’m glad it has that sort of message since it feels a bit weird to think about being in lockdown.
As a band so well renowned for live performances, what challenges have you found replicating such an intricate electronic sound on big stages across the world?
Some of it will be tough but we’re used to it, we’ve got songs like ‘life is a game for changing’ off of the glow and that was very much an electronic song but when we brought it to the band, we added those rock and roll guitars and kind of dirtied it up a bit and gave it a new kind of life and that’s what we’re gonna do with these tunes, they’ll still have that grunge, dirty sort of live undertones to it. We have a great team we work with and they’ve been instrumental in helping us replicate that studio sound live, we’ve got a great touring party and the boys have got more gear and more synths which we didn’t have before and it helps the sound grow. Songs take on a new life form live so I’m looking forward to playing these.
Having made the journey from independent venues successfully graduating to Alexandra Palace, and none other than Wembley Arena this tour, what advice would you give to smaller bands looking to master the local venue scene?
Keep writing music, it’s always good to write new music. Before you move on to another sound or buy more gear, try to get really good at what you do, it’s very easy to get caught up in buying loads of gear without using what you’ve got, and when you play small venues it’s no frills so you have to rely on your actual playing and singing. Of course have fun as well, being in a band is a pretty big job there’s a lot of worse things to be doing with your time to make money, just remember to play to your strengths.
Having played at venues in Sheffield like the iconic ‘Plug’, which sadly had to close, do you fear for the future of independent venues?
Yeah I do. When we went to Middlesborough we played this old fashioned workers club and we heard that had closed down too, and the same thing happened in Sydney as well, we had lockout laws get replaced and things shut down because of that. Live music and kids who love live music will always be bubbling away and I think music’s strong enough to find its way through challenges and i think venues closing sucks and it’s not ideal but I think live music will always find its way to get to people, whether its a gig, a garage party or a warehouse rave, people need it so people will find a way to get it.
It’s just annoying that when venues close it makes it so much less accessible to go check out new bands or a band gets put in a brand new sterile venue that holds way too many people for the size of the band. It’s not ideal but you’ve got to remain optimistic that bands will find a way to perform to their fans.
The building that used to be home to ‘Plug’ is now ‘Network’, and though there is still live music there, there is a greater focus on club nights and electronic music to help pay the bills since that’s what brings in the punters. Has a shift towards more dancey, electronic tunes in your music been a conscious reflection of this wider societal shift? or just pure coincidence?
We’ve been tinkering with electronic music since the early days of the band we just weren’t good enough to do it so we stuck to the rock n roll route. but no that’s not something we really think about, although saying that it is nice to get new fans from other musical backgrounds, and it’s always good to challenge yourself and expand yourself. But it’s not something we decided on because venues like playing that and that’s what’s popular no it’s not like that at all. Johnny loves synthesisers and electronic music so that will come into his song-writing, How many dreams was an instrumental and I wrote a melody over that, which was different for us, usually we sit down with an acoustic guitar and try and write a song, but lots of the songs off the album, the vocals and the melody were added after which is cool. You can kind of hear it I think, it just has a different vibe.
With such a rich indie rock scene at the moment down under, can you help our readers get ahead of the curve and tell us what smaller Australian bands do you feel could follow your footsteps and ‘break Britain’ as you certainly have?
That’s tough, I’ve been off the boil recently, I’ve been listening to lots of old motown stuff. But there’s a great band called King Stingray and they’re amazing. They are from Northern territory, a few indigenous lads and they sing a lot in native language, mixed in with indie guitar stuff, they’re really good man. They’re phenomenal, they did a cover of Coldplay’s Yellow for triple J like a version and he sings in his native language for parts of it and it’s really moving you should check it out.
Is DMA’s fifth album gonna be a Motown record then?
Hahaha I don’t know man, maybe we’ll chill out a bit and get more soulful we’ll see! For now I just want to tour this album, play some live shows and see where we are next year.
Having played Alexandra Palace, supported giants like Liam Gallagher and Kasabian, written four albums, worked with some of the world’s best producers, and having now announced a headline gig at Wembley Arena, what could possibly come next?
Being from Sydney and the band being a studio project at first, we were all in different bands and we didn’t even think we’d actually tour, and play live so when you list those things I feel very proud and very privileged to be in this band. I guess when you get to a point when you’re 4 albums in and you’ve played loads of cool venues, the main thing is to stay solid in your head and keep having a good time and making music you love and staying healthy and just enjoy it. Stay mentally fit on the road and try to stay as happy as you can, make the most of opportunities, take it all in and not get too carried away, enjoy each show.
I think COVID gave everyone perspective when live music was taken away from us for a couple of years. I think naturally, we realised the gigs are really enjoyable and important so it was refreshing to come back to that.
I felt like a lot of people were very engaged in COVID, when we put things online the engagement was really high, with everyone at home on their computers but even still all of that engagement doesn’t compare to engaging with people at a gig in a live venue, and people missed it so much as people forgot what it was like to share the experience of 5000 plus people in a room singing along together, and you can’t do that on a laptop.
That’s what spurs me on to keep writing music, and you ask what’s next, I guess it’s just to keep writing songs that people connect with, and as soon as that stops happening maybe it’s time to chill out a bit.
We all live quite a humble life in Sydney so we do have our feet on the ground.
You can find DMA’s new album, How Many Dreams, on Spotify.
DMA’s are also touring the UK, and you can find tickets here.