For any band, reaching a decade since the release of a debut album is both an impressive feat and a significant milestone. But when Australian indie band DMA’S embarked on the tenth anniversary tour for Hills End, their first album, they wanted to make it clear that more was on the way. Before they ambled off stage after a performance at O2 Academy Leeds earlier this year, the band ended not with an old favourite but a new track, called ‘My Baby’s Place’. Little did the 2700-strong crowd know, but ‘My Baby’s Place’ would go on to be the first single from DMA’S new album DMA’S. It’s their fifth record, and, twelve years in, their second to use the same title.
From Beyoncé to The Smiths, choosing to self-title an album has always been a statement, a vital way to introduce a band or artist into the world. So, five albums in, what’s left to say for DMA’S? “I think it just made sense”, DMA’S rhythm guitarist Johnny Took explains over the phone to The Mancunion, his cadence embodying the laid-back approach that has achieved the three-piece cult status in the indie-rock world. “For the debut album we started out recording D.I.Y. in my bedroom, and then we did a bit more of a produced – but still kind of rocky – guitar album for our second, and then for the third and fourth we incorporated synthesisers and dance-rock elements”.
After experimenting with genre across two albums the best way to move DMA’S’ sound forward was to look back, Took says. “Now it feels like we’re coming back into the guitar world. That feels fresh, because we’ve come from somewhere different, and if we had just done five guitar albums in a row, that wouldn’t be fresh or exciting. I think the fans feel that as well”. Took was a founding member of DMA’S and has played on every record, something especially important considering the new album’s tonal shift. If the band are making any statement with a self-titling, it’s that they’re ready to re-embrace their roots.
The Hills End tenth anniversary tour followed DMA’S’ most extensive break from the stage since the release of their debut EP in 2014. “We were releasing albums on a two-year cycle, which gave us enough time to tour for a year and a half, write another record, and then release it. I think we needed to have the break”, Took acknowledges. “We’d been going ten years, up until that point, without one”. The new album was recorded between L.A. and the band’s own studio in Glebe, Sydney. The spaces gave DMA’S the ability “to record music outside of a strict schedule”, a liberty that came with “huge creative benefits”.
One of the songs that came out of the Glebe sessions was ‘Heatin Park’, the second single from the new album. The self-scheduled studio sessions have clearly worked: on the track, the band return to guitar-based indie with easy dynamism. There’s shades of Britpop and early 2010s indie about its instrumentation, but the track is uniquely danceable in its structure, interwoven with blissed out melodies and excitable rhythmic figures. Its title is a not-so-covert nod to the north-west, which fans of the band were quick to point out as they flooded comment sections upon its announcement to point out the allusion to Manchester’s Heaton Park. “It’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek name”, Took laughs, “because obviously we spelt it differently. But that riff is particularly anthemic, and we could imagine playing the song at a cool festival at Heaton Park. We’ve played there a few times now, and think this would go down well there”.
If the choice to reference Heaton Park is tongue-in-cheek, the love DMA’S have for Manchester certainly isn’t. “The first time we came to Manchester was a real special moment for us, because it was kind of the first city to really take us under their wing in the UK. Especially because we’re from so far away, that was really important to us”, Took says. Mancunians also win on crowd attitude. “There was one time we played O2 Victoria Warehouse, and the owner came backstage and said that we set a record for how many flares had been set off during a gig. Australian crowds are definitely a little bit more laidback; we even curate the set a bit differently for our UK fans, because of their response but also because they’re our favourite fans in the world”.
The love shown by UK fans to DMA’S extended to Took’s side project BIIG TIME, which the guitarist began with his brother Matty, the frontman of PLANET. BIIG TIME released their debut album 200K last year, and embarked on a UK tour in support of it, stopping at Manchester’s Gorilla. “I had a great time doing a side project; I felt like maybe I needed to do it”, Took reminisces. “I sing in that band, and I don’t really consider myself a great singer, but to play and write music with my brother was a really important thing to me”.
To understand DMA’S and BIIG TIME is to understand Took’s artistic background. Musicality runs in the family. “We got into music through my dad”, Took says. “He was a roadie for INXS and Neil Young and Tom Waits“. Ultimately, this resulted in DMA’S helping to shape a new school of mid 2010s Australian music, a generation marked by the willingness to explore and experiment with different sounds, which has always been a defining characteristic of the country’s musical history. When pressed, Took says that an act that embodies this spirit is Confidence Man, “good mates” of his. “They came to my wedding. I wrote ‘SO WHAT’ with them for their last record, which started as an idea for a potential side project with the producer of Confidence Man. Grace [known to most as frontwoman Janet Planet] nails it live”.
Since forming in 2012, DMA’S have never stopped moving with nimble originality, bending the confines of genre while remaining distinctly themselves – and distinctly accessible – at every turn. Despite, in some ways, the band’s new material retrofitting an old sound, Took wants you to know that the tracks on their new album keep up the streak of authenticity and experimentation that has always characterised DMA’S’ music. “The music we make is not so much a conscious decision, but just whatever feels authentic at the time”, he says. “Where we’re at now, all three of us couldn’t be happier to get the guitars back out”.
