DZ Deathrays have brutally laid waste to every stage they've ever stood on, and every barrier that's ever stood in their way.
Their new single, however, shows off another side of the band. 'Northern Lights' is the closest the Brisbane-based duo have ever come to recording a ballad, and while it wouldn't exactly fit seamlessly into a Coldplay set, it does open up a new world of possibilities for their sophomore LP.
Frontman Shane Parsons had a chat with us about the band's softer side, what we can expect from their second album, and what their slot at the Big Day Out means to a couple of blokes from Bundaberg.
First of all, congrats on ‘Northern Lights’. It’s a different sound for you guys, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s a bit different! It’s kind of like one of the softer songs from the first record. You know, it’s just a song that we wrote… it’s probably the softest song that we’ve ever written, but we thought it’d be cool to release it to show that we’re not just doing loud stuff all the time.
It’s not completely uncharted territory for you guys, if you look at a track like ‘Dumb It Down’ from ‘Bloodstreams’…
Yeah!
…But that wasn’t a single. Was it kind of freeing to release a track like this as a single?
Yeah, totally. That was the whole idea. We hadn’t released a song since ‘Cops Capacity’, which was last year in October, I think, something like that? You know, it’d been a year. We’ve got tonnes of songs that we could have recorded and released, just balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n’ roll songs, it could have gone either way, but we figured we’d throw ‘Northern Lights’ out there to show a different side of what we can do. It’s just a bit more downbeat, that’s all.
It gives people something to talk about, anyway. If you’d released something that sounded the same as ‘Cops Capacity’, there’s no narrative there for the music press to push. ‘Good Band releases a song that is much the same as their old songs’ isn’t really a story.
Yeah, and this was one of the first songs we wrote for this record, too. We went and spent two weeks out in country New South Wales; there was this house in Yass that Jack Ladder recorded at and PVT recorded at. We just hired it out and just did demos there by ourselves, just me and Simon [Ridley]. The owner was there, but he and his partner were away most of the time. So we were in this four-story, 10-bedroom, 120-year-old homestead by ourselves. It was creepy as.
We spent two weeks just writing, and that’s when we wrote ‘Northern Lights’. It just felt right. It felt like a full song, pretty much straight away. Then we went over to the UK in May, and we decided we’d record it there. Andy [Savours], who recorded it, really brought it to life. We added a lot of layering, it’ll be a lot more stripped back when we play it live.
The space of the house in NSW... do you think that influenced the scope of the song? It feels bigger and fuller than a lot of the tracks on the first album.
Yeah, I think so. Lyrically, there were a few things that influenced it; the house was one of those things. It was just really weird to be laying around in a huge house with no one in it. My bedroom was bigger than some lounge rooms you get in Sydney, and there were 10 of those! But it was lovely out there, it was amazing. We used to go up and have drinks on the rooftop, and just talk about what we wanted to do with this record. I think it was a good start to the album, to just get away from everyone. We’re doing the same thing at the end. In December, we’re going up to a studio in the Central Coast. We’re going to spend a few weeks with that producer, and that’s it. We’ll put it all together as a final piece.
You mentioned that the house was one of the things that influenced the lyrics of ‘Northern Lights’. What were the other things you were thinking about?
I don’t know, really… my songs aren’t really about anything. There’ll be lines referring to certain things; I knew someone who was having an operation, so that was in my head, and the house was in my head. The ‘northern lights’ part came a bit later. We were trying to figure something out and we went to Iceland just before we recorded it. I didn’t actually see the northern lights, but it was kind of cool to be in a place where that stuff happens. We were there, and it was just coming into summer. Even then, the only time it got dark was around 2am, and then by 3am the sun was up again. It only ever really got to dusk. I just thought I’d love to be in a place like that when something like that was happening.
So it was just a bunch of stuff over time that influenced those lyrics. I would never class myself as a strong lyricist at all. Sometimes I don’t really have too much to write about apart from personal stuff, and I don’t want to write everything as a personal thing. So I just take different things from different places, kind of like a snapshot of my life. Other times I’ll just write about a story that I make up in my head, or a fake person that doesn’t even exist, but they’re fun to write about because you can imagine all the shit they’d get up to. I’ve been doing that a little bit more recently.
The lyrics on this record might seem like they’re about me, but I’m just writing about stories that I have in my head. I’ve just been sitting around thinking, ‘Imagine if that was something that happened,’ you know?
Yeah. The track went into rotation on BBC Radio One — do you freak out when stuff like that happens, or is that just the new normal?
No, it’s awesome! It’s really cool. We don’t expect anything. That’s always been our little motto — don’t expect anything. The only time you’re going to be really disappointed is when you expect that you’re going to be played on the radio, when you expect that you’re going to play at a festival and it’s going to be packed out. If you get those opportunities, don’t expect anything, and you’ll always be surprised. That’s always been the way I feel about it, you know. Don’t expect anything. It’s better to just do things.
Just recently, LA Weekly compared 'Northern Lights' to the Arcade Fire. Which is, you know… you’re certainly both bands with people in them, I guess. What did you make of that comparison?
Well, it’s kind of funny… I love Arcade Fire, I think they’re great. Especially their first two records, I was really into those. So I guess in some way, they have influenced me a little bit, but not too much. They’re just a giant band with so many different things going on, and I’m just trying to write a stripped back, three-chord song.
But it was really funny, because when we were in the UK, before we worked with Andy, we were actually supposed to work with another guy, and he sort of backed out at the last minute. We had one Skype meeting with him before we went into the studio, and he was talking about the song, and he said, ‘Oh, it kind of reminds me of Arcade Fire’. I was like, ‘What? How did you even get that out of it?’ I mean, it’s not a bad thing to be compared to those guys, but it’s kind of funny, because we’re a two-piece and they’re a six-piece or whatever. So it’s weird.
Is the track kind of reflective of what’s to come on the album?
That song is one of the two softer songs. The rest of the album is… I always said I wanted the second album to be more to the point, shorter and heavier. Heavier and softer. Our heavier stuff is heavier and our softer stuff is softer. I hadn’t listened to our record in ages, but I was listening to the demos we’d recorded so far and then I was listening to our record, to ‘Bloodstreams’, and I just couldn’t believe how fast it is. It’s so much faster than the demos we’ve been working on.
The demos are heavier but bouncier, if that makes sense. You can nod your head to them; we’re taking on hip hop beats with heavy guitars. But then there are a couple of songs like ‘Northern Lights’, more melodic songs with that wall of sound. We’ve spent a lot more time on these songs as demos, re-writing parts over and over again, restructuring songs, trying to turn them into something we think is interesting to listen to over and over. I don’t want it to come off as though we’ve over-produced it, but hopefully it just comes off like we’ve actually thought about what we’re doing, rather than just going into the rehearsal room and saying, ‘Hey, that sounds cool, verse-chorus-verse-chorus with a rock-out bit at the end’.
We’re listening to a lot of Queens Of The Stone Age, to the stuff that Josh does between parts — to the little bits and pieces that you take for granted, but when you actually pull apart the song, he’s intentionally put this tiny little riff in there just to link the chorus back to the verse again, instead of just going straight back to the verse. So we’re just thinking more about what we’re doing. It’s good for us, because we’re still a young band, and we’re still learning as we go.
Do you have an idea how far away the album is? Or what it’ll be called?
Haven’t got a name yet. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for ages now. I really like just using a word that sounds good, or a word from one of the lyrics. But so far we haven’t been able to find anything that we’re totally sold on. We’ll be finished recording it before Big Day Out, and then we’ll be mixing it in between Big Day Out, and then we’ll be releasing it, hopefully, in March. Late March, early April at latest. It should be finished by then, that should be plenty of time. And we’ll have a new single out… I don’t know when, but sometime around Big Day Out. We want to try and get overseas again, too. There’s a lot to orchestrate. I think we’re doing South By South West again this year, too.
Yeah. You mentioned Big Day Out — growing up in Bundaberg, was the Big Day Out a big part of your youth, or was it kind of outside your experience?
It was what I looked forward to every year. I’ve only missed two since I was 14. I’ve been to, like, 11 or 12 of them. So, yeah, it was a big thing. It was the only live music I really got to see. There weren’t too many all-ages shows in Bundy. I got to see Frenzal, they played there once, and there were some random bands that you’d just go see because you wanted to see live music. I was in a band at school, but we just used to play at house parties. So Big Day Out was… it was a huge thing.
We got on a bus, leaving at four in the morning, and the bus would take us down to the Gold Coast. We’d hang out at Big Day Out all day, moshing and jumping and running around having a great time. Then we’d get back on a bus, all sweaty, and we’d just freeze our arses off because of the air conditioning all the way back to Bundaberg. We’d get back at four or five in the morning. So it was a huge day, but when you were young, you just didn’t care. You were just so excited.
Everyone would have mix CDs of all the bands they wanted to go see, and we’d put it on in the bus, and people would say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to check out this band, I’ve made this mix CD of all their hits!’ It was rad. I just remember standing there watching bands at Big Day Out, just thinking, ‘I don’t even know what I’d do if I got a chance to stand on that stage’. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, Big Day Out, how long away is that?’ I should be taking it a little more seriously, I think!
The Big Day Out is one of those festivals, because it is so big and it’s been around so long… there are always people who say, ‘Oh, it’s changed, it’s not as good as it was in the ‘90s’. How do you think this bill compares to the ones you grew up with?
Yeah, I don’t know… sometimes I try to think back to all the bands that I saw, and I can’t even remember. What I remember are a lot of the mid-level bands. There were always the big headliners, The Foo Fighters and bands like that, but then there were all these bands in the middle… I went and saw Murderdolls play at Big Day Out once. It was just so good. It blew my mind.
I remember the first band I saw — this might have been at Livid, actually — was Amen. I don’t know if you remember those guys, but they were just crazy. The guy had blood all over his face because he hit himself in the head with the microphone. I thought all festival gigs were like that, because that was the first one I saw.
Then there was all the local stuff. I remember seeing Shihad play a bunch of times at Big Day Out, when they were in their prime. It was just epic. Everyone knew the lyrics, everyone was having an awesome time, and they were just a no-frills band. It was just them up there. And they sounded awesome every time. So that’s what I remember the most. I just remember being so excited to see live music, and then I’d be on a high for months on end after that, trying to write songs and playing in our little band at school. It was cool, it was good to have that opportunity.
But now, there are so many festivals you can go to, and so many have all those mid-level bands as headliners. You go to a festival now, and it might not be some superstar who’s headlining, but it’ll be a really good band who would usually be in the middle of the bill at a big festival. But yeah, I love seeing bands like that at Big Day Out… even last year, they had Death Grips and Jeff The Brotherhood, and that was rad for me, because I’m really into both those groups. I always love seeing those bands at, like, three o’clock, four o’clock.
Which band are you most excited to be touring with on this year’s bill?
Well, we’ve got our friends playing, Violent Soho, and we’ve wanted to tour with them for so long. We’ve been buddies with them for years now. I think we’ve done a show or two together, but finally we get to do a tour where we can see each other all the time and have beers. They’re our Brisbane pals, so that should be awesome. And I’m pretty keen to meet a few people. I really want to catch the guys from Grouplove, Snoop, Arcade Fire… it’s going to be great.
There are some bands on there I don’t really know, especially the heavy stuff, so I should really get back into my heavy music. I’ll definitely be trying to check out as much as I can.
DZ Deathrays Big Day Out dates
Sun Jan 19 — Metricon Stadium (Gold Coast)Fri Jan 24 — Flemington Racecourse (Melbourne)
Sun Jan 26 — Sydney Showgrounds
Fri Jan 31 — Bonython Park (Adelaide)
Sun Feb 02 — Claremont Showgrounds (Perth)
