DMA’S | INTERVIEW
Though many presume this band are British, DMA’s – vocalist Tommy O’Dell, lead guitar Matt Mason and Johnny Took on acoustic guitar – were born and still reside in Australia. Their substantial UK fanbase, though, has yielded latest album release Live At Brixton. Mason, back home, was Zoomed by Carl Marsh.
Time-honoured long-distance introductory opener, then: what’s the weather like?
Mason: Oh, dude, we just filmed a video for Radio X a couple of days ago. And they were like, “Oh, can you just do a nice little video with five or five or six songs or something?” And we get to the location, and it was on this fucking beautiful rooftop. The sun was setting, and it was just the most beautiful weather with little birds flying around and shit. And we’re saying that we can’t fucking show them this in the UK because they’ll think that we’re taking the piss. [laughs]
You sold out Brixton Academy on 5 Mar 2020: previously the venue of your first ever UK gig, as opening act, but this time you were headlining. Can you describe how you felt when you walked onto the stage that night?
Well, Liam Gallagher rocked up just before we went on, and he was just chilling, side of the stage. I didn’t know that would be there! He was there with his kids and a bunch of people, and I was already fucking nervous enough, you know, and just as I’m fucking walking on, he turns around and stops me and goes, “good luck, mate”. And I’m thinking fucking hell, dude! It just added a whole new level to it. I was cool, but if I was nervous before, then fuck, it doesn’t help when one of your idols is just standing right there, staring at you. It was cool, but that did throw me off a bit because I was getting in the zone.
I can even remember starting the first song, and I was playing the wrong chord as I was going, “fuck!” It was just all too much to take in. Even before we went down to the stage, someone said, “man, the vibe down there, it’s like a football match”. And I’ve never heard anyone describe a gig like a football game, which got us pretty excited.
It proved to be the DMA’s last live gig before music events got cancelled – but, one year to the day, you’re releasing it as Live At Brixton. I noticed two gems – Warsaw and For Now – didn’t make the setlist that night; you’ve got so many songs to choose from, so how did you end up with the selection you played?
It’s basically just Tommy, man – he’s got like a 16-song limit. That’s his personal rule. He just doesn’t like playing more than 16 songs, I think an hour and 15 or an hour and 20 is the limit. I would be happy to fucking go all night. I could do a Bruce Springsteen-level fucking gig that went for three hours if it was up to me, and so would Johnny – but I think with Tommy, his voice does lose a bit of its power after like an hour. He doesn’t want to do too many tracks, and I get that when we are on tour, mostly if you play every night for like a month.
I would have loved to have played Warsaw. And we used to always open with For Now. We fucking love those songs, but when we tour the next album, we’re going to be adding new songs from [2020 album] The Glow, so there will be a few more casualties, I reckon.
Taking away the DMA’s debut, which you’d probably been writing for years, you seem to have steadily put a record out every two years. What’s your secret?
Well, there’s always a mix of new and old songs. For example, on [2018 album] For Now there is a track called Tape Deck Sick, and I wrote that in 2006. We’ve never really felt that pressure that some bands feel, you know, where you only have two years to write an album because we just have so many songs between us. And we also have songs that don’t make an album, but then the next album may make it. I don’t know why that is – I think because people’s tastes change. The songs are always good, but they might just not suit the band at that very particular time.
How many songs have you got just sitting around?
We’ve got, like, probably 100 songs that could go on any album, at any time, at any moment. They’re just sitting there waiting for the perfect moment to be plucked. When we started the band we were in our early 20s, so we’ve been writing songs for so long already. There’s a couple of songs on The Glow that were written maybe 10 years ago. If we wanted to right now, we could probably release two albums’ worth of songs we just have sat there. So we’re never really that stressed out about it.
Live At Brixton is out now on BMG. Info: www.dmasdmas.com
words CARL MARSH