DMA's announce rescheduled UK tour dates

Credit: DMA's

DMA’S announce new “feel-good record” ‘How Many Dreams?’

Wed 19 October 2022 12:45, UK

DMA’S have announced their fourth studio album, How Many Dreams?, alongside a preview single, ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’. See details and listen to the new single below.

DMA’S brand new album is set for full release on March 31st, 2023 and sees the band at the peak of their maturity as they look to bring sunshine to post-pandemic life. With the production expertise of Stuart Price and Rich Costey, fans are in for something special.

“With ‘How Many Dreams’, we really nailed that down and experiments with a lot of different sounds and different genres. It’s a great blend of the three things we love, which are rock’n’roll tunes, pop singalongs and electronic music,” explained vocalist Tommy O’Dell in a recent interview alongside Johnny Took with NME.

“Our music will always have that nostalgic edge to it, but [this album] was about being less of a throwback band and more in the future,” he added. The lead single ‘I Don’t Need To Hide’ “sums up the album best. It’s got a bit of everything.”

‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’ is about “letting go of the things that weigh us down and embracing the future with a sense of optimism. Stepping in the ‘right light in the dark times’,” Took said in a press statement.

Took explained that the “tongue-in-cheek” song was inspired by a conversation he had with his friend who drank at the pub on a school night. “It has a real playful vibe”, Took said, but also deals with the time he quit drinking. “It’s about when you’ve had a few too many drinks and say something stupid. Everyone’s been there.”

Elsewhere on the album, there’s ‘Fading Like A Picture’ which “opens with this rocking guitar riff” and “harks back to that old DMA’S sound,” according to Took. “There’s a song like ‘De Carle’, which is a full-blown, five-minute electronic song. We weren’t trying to split the difference. We really leant into the genre, which is so cool. There are surprises like that across the record.”

“We did what we wanted,” added O’Dell. “We didn’t have any boundaries and that’s what is really exciting about the record. You can’t put it in a box, but it’s still DMA’S.”

The Australian trio spent three weeks in a London studio with production masterminds Stuart Price and Rich Costey “working on a lot of band in the room stuff”. The Omicron Covid-19 variant hit, and DMA’S had to return to Australia sooner than they would have liked. Though most of the album was done, “when we got back to Sydney, we were listening to the desk mixes and it felt like we had a lot more work to do.” With Costey and Price on the other side of the world, though, they got Konstantin Kersting in to help them finish the record.

“We Screamadelica-fied it,” Took said, referencing Primal Scream’s classic 1991 album. “We’d find a live drumbeat [we’d recorded in London] but would only use eight bars of it, then we’d put programming underneath it, and some extra synths. We really had the time to be creative on this record, which we’ve never really done before.”

Working with Costey and Price was “just great”, Took said. “It’s amazing when you jump in a studio with anyone new, especially when they’re of that calibre. They’ve just got so many great stories and so much knowledge. Kersting might be younger but he’s worked on some great records as well. All three of them nailed it.”

With the DMA’s seeming to have reached full maturity in the studio, How Many Dreams? is a “bloody feel-good record,” according to Took. “We couldn’t be more proud of it.”

“We didn’t want to release something gloomy after [COVID],” added O’Dell. “There are still sentiments that are a bit doom and gloom but it’s definitely a feel-good record with positivity and nostalgia.”

After the release of the new album and an exciting slot supporting Arctic Monkeys at The Domain in Sydney, DMA’S set off to tour the UK in April 2023.

“I was thinking about the live show for a lot of the songs on How Many Dreams?,” Took added, discussing the band’s live element. “I’ve never written like that before but we played ‘I Don’t Need To Hide’ for the first time the other day and for such a new song, it went down really well. Incorporating those pop and electronic elements into our music means there’s a real dynamic to the set now [so] we can really hold our own on those big stages.”

Listen to ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’ below.