"If you're a fan of the band and you're a fan of the music, then there's a good chance you're going to enjoy this record." - hmv.com talks to DMA'S

How are you doing?

Yeah, good, man, good. A couple of shows last night at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.

Oh, I've been there.

Yeah, it was it was like a couple of kind of acoustic gigs that we're doing, kind of though, like for presales for the album and the put on by the record store.

Yeah. Oh, nice, how'd it go?

Super Bubbly.

Cool! So first of all, I think we should just dive into the new album. I love if you could just give us like a, like a run through of, of sort of where you guys were when you were writing this one and what kind of direction you wanted to take it in.

Yeah, like, I guess like the main things are, is like the way we had 17 demos to pick from that because band in between the ten year period, I guess majority of the songs were new, but there was some that like this one song called 21 New Vacancy, which I wrote when I was 20, is 21 years old, so that was like 13 years ago. So, you know, they spent the span anywhere between that and, and Yeah, and basically like so we, we took that down to like got that dance like 15 songs and then we went in and we did three weeks with in London with Rich Costa and Stuart Price, and then we kind of came back to Australia and yeah, we just kind of felt like the album wasn't quite there yet. And then we went in with another producer, Konstantin Kersting, and, and basically finished it off in Sydney, which is great because we're all at home with our families and, and we kind of had time to kind of mull over what we, the work we've done in, in London and, and yeah. And I guess like basically like when we worked with Stuart Price on the club, which was our third record I guess like prior to that day, made it always been quite a throwback band of doing the nineties guitar thing. And I feel like Stuart kind of really brought us into like a more modern context and I feel like maybe like this album is like an extension of, of, of that maybe like with, with more of our personality stamped into it rather than on the glow where Stuart Postecoglou control. But we learned a lot from him.

You spend a lot of time between Australia and here right?

Yeah. Yeah. We, we are continuously chasing summers, you know.

What's that like for you guys?

Well, we used to like we've been touring pretty intensely for because we had obviously had a break during COVID, but before COVID, those going on six years were pretty intense touring. But things have changed a bit for us now. You know, I got married two months ago. Tommy's just had a kid about a year ago, you know, and things are a little bit different now, so we've kind of changed how extensively we were. We're way so we're kind of trying to go away for more than a month, you know, because we don't want to me to be missing special moments with these kids and, you know, and the dynamics change. But also it's kind of worked out well for us. Does the gigs have kind of got bigger so you're kind of doing less shows in some ways because you're feeding more people into like one show.

I saw you guys are playing Wembley!

Yeah on the 21st.

How do you feel about that?

Oh great. Yeah. It's, you know, last time we were there, we were supporting the coops. Mm hmm. But yeah, it's because we were meant to be playing it at Brixton. And then obviously all that horrible stuff happened in Brixton. And so we kind of had to make a last minute decision and then we decided to do Wembley and, and I'm kind of into it to us, we've already done the live album at Brixton anyway, so it's kind of nice to change it up. Yeah. You know, for such an iconic venue as well, you know, it's, it's pretty, pretty exciting stuff.

Absolutely. Just go back about the album a little bit. You mentioned some of the songs. The 21 break.

A 21 year vacancy.

That's the one. Would you mind telling us a little bit about that? That sounds really interesting. Like the idea run the song.

Are are well, it was a song that like stuck. It was kind of one of those songs that I wrote direct after, I guess, my first Heartbreak, which I think anyone in like Adolescence is Who's experienced, though everyone kind of goes through that. You know, when you have your first, you know, heartbreak kind of thing. And for some reason that song just stuck around. You know, I think we always knew there was something in it. Yeah. And, you know, we did a version of it in Maine. Tommy's open and me and Mason had played that in other bands before, and it just kind of just kept popping up. And then but then Mason had written the chorus and the pre-chorus part, and so and which came years later. And then we decided, Frank and signed them together, which is something we tend to do quite a lot. The three of us collaborating and sometimes someone might have a like a voice memo or something like that. And then, and we're like, and we'll experiment with putting them into the same key as, as another idea. And it's kind of like where a lot of our songs are formed.

So it's very collaborative then. It's not like one person is the.

Oh no one. If one person was missing, it wouldn't be dma's at all. Yeah, yeah. It's really good.

Is there anything you want to sort of share about the album that you think is really important for people to understand, is that listening to it when it drops?

Well, I think like one of the things is like if you've followed DMA's career, I guess the three kind of styles of songwriting we're known for is there's we've got like the dance rock kind of thing that we've lent into. We've got the more ballads, singalong vibes, and then we've also got like the rock and roll jangly guitar kind of numbers, you know? Yeah. And I feel like this album, like there's something for everyone in that regard and that really like covers, like those three kind of pinnacle musical ideas that like we've become known for. And also, like, one thing I've realized is incorporating songs like everybody's think those Days, The Weekend and Fading like a Picture and Olympia and all this stuff. Like we play the festival the other day and it's been funny. It's amazing when you incorporate new songs into a setlist, how it can dramatically change the energy of the show. And like the energy of the show, Man is like, it's like really going up the level since incorporating the new songs of this album, and I think that's what I'm most excited to about like in a live kind of aspect is like getting that out, getting people seeing the show with this new songs Incorporated because the the whole energy of the performances is going up quite dramatically.

DMA'S / How Many Dreams is out 31 March, order on any format before 6 April to be in with a chance of winning a dream gig experience.