The story of the DMA’S began, the way all good stories do, with a bit of a twist in the tale. Three guys from Australia, playing in other bands, stumble upon each other. They write songs, and there’s a buzz, a connection. Suddenly they’re signed, but they’ve never played together live – and there’s a lot of bets riding on that it won’t all work out. But it does. The single takes off, the live shows are good, and suddenly the hype isn’t hype anymore. That means that Johnny Took, Tommy O’Dell and Matt Mason are looking to the future. Comparisons to Oasis, another band who was no stranger to controversy, follow, with all the good and bad that could come out of that. Fortunately, the DMA’S have seen a bit of territory and were ready to make good on all the promise. Their self-titled EP is coming out here May 18th on Mom + Pop Music, and Northern Transmissions was curious to get the dirt before the DMA’s hit the Northern Hemisphere. So Alice Severin spoke with Johnny Took on the other side of the globe while he was in a pub and she was waking up, about recording, hearing your own voice, and being honest.
And I was like, I write pretty much most of the lyrics, so I was like, fucking A, if you guys are believing him and you feel that you can hear honesty in those vocals, you think that he wrote every line like that, then that’s the most important thing, you know? That’s what people are looking for, I think. Through all the bullshit, and everything that’s been done, people are looking for honesty these days.
