After the common courtesy of weather-related chat, we got down to the business end of things with DZ before they headed off to the US of A.
I hear you guys headed up to Splendour in the Grass last month?
Yeah, we just went as punters. It’s the fifth year I’ve been now. It’s always really good, such a good weekend.
What were some of your highlights?
Definitely Foals, I was really looking forward to seeing them for ages and ages so that was great. I got to see LCD [Soundsystem] again, I saw them in the States earlier in the year and that was awesome too. Tame Impala, too, who I’m quite into. We played a show with them in Sydney ages ago at the Oxford Art Factory. I’ve always really liked them, and now I’ve got their album and I’m just obsessed with it.
You guys are about to jet off overseas, how’s that trip come about? Is it your first time touring outside of Australia?
It’s our first time out of Australia properly. We’ve been over to New Zealand a couple of times. We played over there… we just went over there and did a 7” launch and then we went over and played at Camp A Low Hum. It’s a totally DIY festival, and it’s absolutely amazing… the best thing I’ve ever been to. I think it’s only about 1,500 people go to it and they have bands like Die! Die! Die! and Dan Deacon and stuff like that. They had an old agricultural college set up, and it hadn’t been used in 20 years so they had dormitories with mattress on the floor for you to stay in. The swimming pool was empty, and they had Dan Deacon playing in the swimming pool. It was so good! But apart from that, we haven’t really been overseas as a band yet. We were sort of had an opportunity to go to the UK in September, but it got too close to the mark. It got to the point where we were like, ‘Ah, this is really bad, but we have to pull the pin’.
Do you guys know where you’re playing yet, or is that all going to come into play when you get there?
Well we’re just waiting to get confirmation from CMJ [Annual industry festival in NYC], but we just decided that we’re going to go over and play some shows. So far, we’re playing a show at a place called Lit Lounge [in New York] soon as we get there. It’s a small venue and we’re just going to put together our own show there. We’re also trying to get residencies and more music industry kind of things. I know that sounds kind of lame but it would be cool if we could go over there and maybe get some interest so we can go back and tour.
Hypothetically, if you guys had a telethon to get yourselves over to New York City, who would be the host of that telethon?
Maybe, I’ll go out on a limb, because we’re going to America we could get Charlie from I t’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I think he’d be awesome.
Will the States even let you in!? I heard you’ve had some fun at a couple of warehouse parties recently…
Well, it’s not really us. We just went to play at a warehouse party and it got shut down pretty much before it even got started, which sucks because so much effort went into it. That was just a bummer more than anything, rocking up and seeing the police there already. Then we played a show in the Gold Coast and they had to shut it down. I don’t know if the cops showed up but the organisers had to shut it down while the first band was playing. People on the Gold Coast are crazy, there was like fights and stuff while the first band was playing. We were just sitting in the back corner with a few friends going, ‘Holy shit, this is really, really intense!’ Then I think a lot of those people got kicked out, they were just really drunk and really young, and really bored. When we played it was all good inside, but apparently outside there was loads of underagers that were getting real boisterous and started throwing bottles on the road and lit a fire on the road. The organiser had to cut us off, and we had some new songs that we had been looking forward to playing and we didn’t actually even get to play them in the end. We haven’t really played since, we’ve been too busy doing other stuff: we had Splendour, and working, trying to save money.
Have you had any luck with warehouse shows over the years?
The first time we played a warehouse party was actually the first time we came to Sydney in 2008. We played another one at the Gold Coast that was the first really big warehouse party we’ve played at. It was a tiny room but there was like 250 people crammed into it and we played with The Scare. We opened for them and it was awesome, everyone was in such a good mood that night. Everyone was partying hard and they weren’t fighting each other! It’s crazy because sometimes you do a show and you can’t even get 200 people to it, and then you play these warehouse parties and there’s like 400 people inside and there’s 200 people outside.
What have you got, if you don’t mind me asking, as a day job?
I just work in government. I’ve worked in government for three years, when I finished uni I just needed a job. I just do office stuff, and it’s all quite soul destroying. But you get paid okay and they let me have time off when I need it.
You’ve got the new single Gebbie Street out now, what can you tell us about that?
It’s a song that we wrote while we were mucking around one day. It started off being a really funky little bass line that I was writing, and then we actually wrote it into a song because it moves along really well. We’ve been playing it live now for about six months or so. We were really happy with how the recorded version came out. The level of recording is perfect for us, it’s kind of polished but it’s still gritty. We don’t want to depart from that gritty sound and move into a pop-polished sound at all, but we do want to be able to reach out to more people. It’s just supposed to be a fun song about our friend’s house.
Transcription by James Fogarty.
