DMA’S

Photography by McLean Stephenson. Interview by Heather Hawke.

Sydney trio DMA’S made up of Tommy O’Dell, Matt Mason and Johnny Took formed in 2012 and made an immediate impression with the release of their 2014 self-titled debut EP. The three members each grew up playing instruments from a young age and had played in various groups together before, but for Tommy who was previously a drummer, he decided to take the opportunity to try something new – singing. 2015 saw them hitting the road on the festival circuit including spots at Australia’s own Groovin the Moo, as well as U.S. festivals like Boston Calling, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Outside Lands and the legendary U.K. festivals Reading and Leeds. Following the release of their first album (Hills End) in 2016 and their second album (For Now) in 2018, they became one of the first Australian bands to play the iconic MTV Unplugged session. Over the last few years they’ve also done quite a few tours around the UK/EU and a couple times around the U.S. they’ve also had slots at festivals such as; Coachella, SXSW, and Australia’s own Splendour in the Grass, Laneway, and The Falls.

In support of their third album THE GLOW out on July 10 (release date got pushed 3 months due to COVID-19) the band acted as support on Liam Gallagher’s huge Nov 2019 – March UK arena tour. The Glow was recorded and mixed by multiple Grammy winner Stuart Price (The Killers, Madonna, New Order) in between Westlake Studios in West Hollywood & RAK Studios in London. The album finds them pushing their boundaries with even more sensational hooks, melodic energy, and delicate emotions.

Hi! So, things are pretty scary/crazy/stressful right now in the world…..As a musician/creative, what are your feelings right now? Anything you want to talk about / get off your chest?

We’ve pushedour album back which initially was annoying at first but we’re really proud of this album and it’s important to us to back it properly with live shows and the sort. Having a studio at home has been a benefit for this lockdown period though, writing a lot continuously experimenting with production ideas.

I want to start from the beginning. What was your childhood like growing up in AUS, what city(s) did you grow up in? Did creativity play a big part of your childhood?  

 We all grew up in Sydney. My dad was a roadie, so music was always around as kid, I guess how it was all introduced to me.

Tell me about your musical upbringing. What music did you grow up to? When did you first become aware that music was going to be a part of your life? What was your formal / not formal music education like growing up? 

We had to learn an instrument in our first year of high school and Ihad to pick between bass guitar and clarinet. I picked bass and had a bit of knack for it – then my mate taught me “Scar Tissue” on the guitar when Iwas 13 and Ifelt cool so wanted to learn more songs. I couldn’t sing so I use to write poems – then Isecretly got singing lesson (because Ithought it was uncool to sing – if only Iknew and started earlier) and started turning them into songs.

Let’s talk about your formative years. What was the very first concert you attended? Did you play any sports / go to summer camps? Were there posers on your wall when you were growing up? 

Besides being taken to Janet Jackson when Iwas 11 and a few country artiststhat my dad was into my first festival Iwent to was Homebake when Iwas 14. I moshed to Grinspoon. I played soccer, basketball and waterpolo as a kid and went to the Youth Olympics for swimming when I was 14, got silver.

When you were old enough to start seeking out music for yourself, where did you regularly find yourself (a certain record store / internet site / getting recommendations from a certain friend)? Who were some of the artists you found / were always on the lookout for? 

There was a store in the CBD called Dirt Cheap CD’s – Iused to get the bus in and search for hours. My dad also had a huge collection and I would close my eyes and pick random ones – that’s how I discovered Bruce Springsteen. Then a mate I was playing music with in high school – our bass player Tom Crandles (Prudence) and old guitarist Paddy Harrowsmith (Green Buzzard) – got me into The Verve, Stone Roses and Oasis – that was my introduction into Brit-pop.

Describe your path to becoming involved with music. What’s your earliest musical memory? When was the first time you felt super inspired by music? 

I remember driving to the bottle shop with my dad when Iwas four years old and listening to ‘Diamonds on the soles of theshoes’ from Paul Simon’s Graceland.

How did the band come together? Would you say it was an organic union, or were you all looking to start a band?

We played in different bands together and then when I was living with Tommy we started recordingand building a répertoireof tunes.

I want to talk a little bit about your previous albums Hills End (Feb 2016) and For Now (April 2018). How long were both in the making? Did you have any parts off of For Now that dated back to when you were working on Hills End or before? Also, are there any parts off ofThe Glow that date back to either of the previous releases?

“Cobracaine”on The Glow as written a few days after “Delete” was written and the beginnings of “Silver”were written before Hills End came out – I guess we just hadn’t figured out how to record them exactly how we wanted. In staying that “TheEnd” (Hills End) and “Criminals” (The Glow) were brought to the table maybe only a month before recording respectively.

 What’s the band’s songwriting/creative process like? Are you always writing? Was there a specific moment when work on the The Glow began? Or does the line between the writing for the albums sort of blur? How much did you, and the album, evolve in that time?

Kinda of hard to say – they range from either one of us bringing a nearly completed song to the table to us joining a whole bunch of random ideas or memos put together.

What was the writing process like for The Glow? Where were you at physically, mentally when you wrote the music? Was there an event or a specific timeframe where a large chunk of the lyricism came out? Did the writing process change since the last time you sat down to write for a recording? Is that process something that’s shifted for you over time? 

Like I said earlier, the songs were collections of ideas all of us had come up with over the years, which we combined and finished in the studio. Tommy and Mason were still in Sydney, but I spent ten months in Edinburgh and got really into UK electronic music, which inspired “Life is a Game of Changing”. But there’sstill a lot of guitar driven stuff; like “Hello Girlfriend”which started as an idea of Mason’s of the concept of someone waking up in hospital out of a coma (‘Hello Doctor, hello Mother, hello girlfriend, little brother’) mixed with a dedication song I’d written about that Edinburgh apartment mentioned, which I refer to as Christie because of the name branded on the door.

As this was your third album, what mindset did you have going into the creating / recording process? Did you feel any sort of limitationswhen writing or recording it? 

Our mindset was probably just that we wanted it to be our best album yet and I think we did that. You’re always limited by the fact that your fans know you for something and you can’t just repeat it, so you risk losing them as you evolve, but you just hope that you evolve into something better and keep the essence of where you came from alive in there somewhere. I think we’ve done that too.

What was your favorite part about the writing / album creation process for The Glow? 

 Experimenting with more electronic elements and working with a pro like Stuart Price to get them over the line.

Your newest single/video, “Life Is A Game of Changing”, was shot in Bangkok & Thailand. Does traveling influence you as an artist? Are you inspired by the places you go, or do you think your work would sound about the same no matter where you created it?

Definitely inspired by the places we go. I mentioned Edinburgh, but touring we’ve seen a lot of the world which rubs off on you but also gives you a good perspective on home. We’ve made a few videos in the UK, but the director Bill Bleakly had a film school mate who lives in Thailand and we knew some guys there who were into making videos, so we linked them up and made one there.

I feel like the music industry has shifted even more so the last couple years how has it felt as an artist? Has it been freeing? Is it scary trying to question how to approach music making and then how to / if you want to creatively release it to the public?

To be honest with you, at the time of writing, this is a little overwhelming to even think about, but the short answer is ‘yes’ to all that.

On that topic, how much energy do you put into the visuals (music videos, press images, artwork) that accompany your music?Do you feel like the art that accompanies one’s music is more / less important than it used to be? How do you feel like social mediaimpacts the intention behind all of this?

We’re a band when it comes down to it, so music is the main thing we do, but yeah, visuals have always been important in getting that across to people. It can be nice having a completed song and giving the reins to a visually focused artist and letting them roll with it, other times is fun to get involved too. Social media just means you need to be better at all of it to cut through the noise.