INTERVIEW: DMA’s

Hailing from Australia, DMA’S are a band that are quickly establishing themselves in the UK, collecting a sufficient following in impressive time through their lively shows and adapting a sound that is cherished in the UK and making it their own – with fans such as Liam Fray, they can’t go far wrong. With their debut album now released, as well as a tour we caught up with band member Johnny Took to see how things were shaping up.

Hi Johnny, How are you and what have you been up to so far today?

I’m good thanks man, how’re you? Today we had our first rehearsal since we arrived in the UK, we flew in yesterday morning, which was a bit of a hectic flight, but yeah we’re cool.

So what do you reckon to the English weather?

I’m really enjoying the weather actually. It’s so bloody hot back home like there’s times where it’s forty plus degrees so this makes a nice change. I bloody love the rain, I think it’s cosy.

The UK tour is about to kick off, how are you feeling as it approaches?

Really good! We’re actually really surprised at how well all the shows have been selling so far, that’s really cool. It’s a great feeling, at least it takes away the fear of having a long flight to play in front of about two people, it’s one less thing to worry about really. It means we must be doing something right, yknow? And it’s also nice that it’s fallen in line with the album release and all that stuff, so it all feels organic which is good.

What are you most excited about in regards to the tour?

I’m not too sure really, probably the London gig because we’ve been getting a bit of BBC airtime recently and it feels like people are starting to notice us – it’s always been a goal for us to come over here and turn some heads. Another thing that’s great is that we always get to meet new people after the gigs.

How do you find playing over here in comparison to playing at home?

Well one thing I’ve noticed about playing over here is that people do a lot of football chants and that sort of thing, that’s a bit crazy. People get really rowdy over here, probably more rowdy than they do back home.

You’ve gained support from people like Liam Fray of the Courteeners over here of recent, how does that feel?

Yeah it’s really cool, every time we’ve played in Manchester we’ve gone and hung out with Liam, and that’s sweet. It’s really nice that we can come over here now and always have people to go and see and hang out with, hopefully we’ll see him again at the Manchester show this time. Looking back on it, that was probably our craziest show last time, we played in the Deaf Institute which is a great venue.

You’ve been getting a lot of comparisons towards a lot of Britpop – do you consider Britpop to be an influence of yours?

Yeah big time. I mean we obviously have a lot of influences across a wide range of different genres, like the generation we were born in could obviously access a lot of music more easily due to the internet and that’s obviously plays a huge part in today’s music. Of course we take a lot of inspiration from a lot of Australian bands but I love bands such as Oasis and the La’s, they just write great tunes really.

What can we expect from DMA’S throughout the rest of the year?

We’re just really excited to play all of the new tunes from the new album, yknow? The more we play them, the more and more they’ll grow as songs and they’ll get more depth and even more feeling to them. We just can’t wait for as many people to hear them as possible.