The Australian indie-rockers are gearing up to release a live recording of their biggest UK headline show to date.
We don’t know if you’ve noticed, but DMA’S are a pretty big deal. From sold-out UK tours to support slots for the likes of The Courteeners and Liam Gallagher, there’s seemingly nothing that this Aussie trio haven’t done.
We caught up with DMA’S’ frontman, Tommy O’Dell, to talk about the release of their new live album, DMA’S – Live at Brixton, as well as their songwriting processes, what they’ve been doing to kill time in lockdown, and what to do when your festival set gets cut short because of a hurricane passing through the site. 👇🏽
Your first-ever UK gig was a support slot at London’s Brixton Academy, and now you’re releasing a live album that you recorded at your sold-out headline show at that very venue. That must be a full-circle moment for you.
Tommy (O’Dell, frontman): ‘Yeah, we played there with The Courteeners about six years ago, and even then, we were thinking about how special it would be to do our own show there. Finally getting to do it was definitely a memorable moment for everyone in the band.’
How do you feel when you wake up on the morning of a big show like that?
‘I remember Brixton being a little different because it wasn’t on the back of a tour. I think we did one small gig the night before to raise money for the bush fires in Australia, and then the next day was Brixton, so we didn’t get the same amount of preparatory time as we would for a full time. But we’ve been playing live for a while now – we’re a good live band, and it’s something we love to do, so we don’t find it too difficult.’
It seems like you’re a band who are constantly on the road – you must’ve been going mad during this lockdown.
‘We’ve been trying to keep busy and writing music. We’ve played a few acoustic (and socially distanced) gigs around Australia which has been better than nothing. But yeah, we’ve just been continuing to write new tunes and demoing, and just making the most of the time.’
Can you talk us through your songwriting process?
‘It really varies. Sometimes we just write a song from scratch, or sometimes we take a few of our individual songs and join them together into a new, jointly written track. Every song’s different – most recently, we’ve been working on production, so we’ll find a beat, or a riff, or a certain sound that we like, and then we’ll just kinda go from there.’
‘There are a lot of DMA’S songs that Johnny just writes on his own with an acoustic guitar, so that’s still a big part of our songwriting process. No matter how far we dig into the production side of things, we’ll always have that organic side to our sound.’
So, who have you guys been listening to lately?
‘Johnny has been listening to a lot of The Chemical Brothers. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Weeknd’s stuff, actually. It’s something a bit different – well, different for me anyway. I’m also listening to a lot of soul stuff – my taste changes all the time, but I always have the classic stuff that I go back to. It’s also nice to dive into new, young artists as well; particularly those who are from the same area as you. There’s a lot of great music coming out of Australia right now.’
‘I think that Australians have always produced great rock ‘n’ roll bands, and also great singer-songwriters. I guess nowadays it’s easier for younger, not so well-known artists to get out and put their music out there without having huge record deals. Radio X and Absolute Radio play Sydney bands sometimes, too – even bands who aren’t even that big – which I think is really cool.’
It’s amazing how a band can create something from a bedroom and have it spread across the world like that.
‘It really is. For all the shit that’s going on at the moment and bands not being able to travel or tour, it doesn’t mean people can’t make great music. I think that’s a plus to this awful situation: I think that there are going to be a lot of really good albums coming over the next 8 months or so. It’s just a product of people having that time on their hands that they probably didn’t have before. It’s given people the opportunity to work on shit.’
What’s the strangest gig you’ve ever played?
‘We were playing Hurricane Festival in Germany and our set got curtailed because of a huge fucking hurricane that came through the festival site. For the sheer irony alone, that’s probably it.’
‘We did just play a gig for New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour, behind the Opera House. It’s usually got thousands and thousands of people there, and we just did it for TV – so we performed to no-one. I have to say, that was kind of weird.
What’s next for you guys?
‘It’s kinda hard to say at the moment… But we’ve got a few things planned, so if everything goes well we’ll do them towards the end of the year. We’ve got heaps of stuff booked in the UK, but it just keeps getting delayed. So, in the meantime, we’re just demoing and recording stuff. We’ve always been a band that has continued to write lots of songs, so we’re just going to continue doing that. Then as soon as we can get out there and play live, we’ll be there.
Describe yourself in three words?
‘Honest, lazy, and generous. Isn’t that precisely the type of person you want to hang out with?