I have never walked out of a concert, but Australian band DMA’s gig in the Academy brought me to the brink.
This band is the epitome of what you’d imagine it means to be ‘Big in Australia’. A local sonic comparison that comes to mind, though too generous when applied to DMA’s standard of music, would be the Irish band The Academic. If you want to get cosmopolitan about it, consider Imagine Dragons’ music but with fewer hooks, directionless melody, and no target audience.
The opening band for DMA’s were enjoyable and infused the audience with a pop punk vitality. I waited with a beer, sipping with anticipation and excitement for the night. The few gigs I have gone to this year have shown artists at their best. Due to smaller tours and over a year to reflect on their craft, music has benefited in part from the pandemic. This maxim did not ring true for DMA’s. Despite my one Heineken, I was sober.
Around 9 o’clock, six men of indeterminate age took to the stage. They were inexplicably dressed in massive colourful parkas, some with hoods up. Why these men would choose to wear skiing gear inside the Academy, at a sold out show filled with bouncing young lads and their girlfriends, is beyond me. The furred hoods on the band members conveyed an air of mystery. Unfortunately, this aura of mystique was broken the moment they opened their mouths. DMA’s style of music could be described as bland. They play guitar infused songs with a dash of tambourine and unassuming drumming. Their vocals could be called inoffensive. These elements combined, however, make the music so mind-numbingly ‘chilled’ that you cannot tell one song from another.
The band opened with ‘Never Before’, an innocuous track about being in love. This turned out to be a lasting theme for the night. When the lead vocalist sang “Stop me, I lost myself/I’ll be movin’ on, you’re the one I want/Stop me, I lost myself/And I’ll be movin’ on, you’re the one I want” I was completely moved. If only I had lost myself on the way to the Academy. I did eventually ‘move on’, but not soon enough, dear reader. Equally, the members of DMA’s were not the ones that I, or anyone imaginable, could ever want. If only I had the foresight to take the above lyrics as a warning for what was to come.
DMA’s cite Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, New Order, The Music, Dinosaur Jr, and various Britpop bands as sources of inspiration. As a fan of the artists and genres listed, I hope these music giants never find out that they may have inspired DMA’s sound. As I had never fully realised before attending this gig: ignorance can be a truly beautiful state. As the set went on, I was treated to the songs ‘The Glow’, ‘Play Video’, and ‘Dawning’. These songs would not sound out of place if you heard them in Lidl or Dunnes while you were shopping. Perhaps, if you tuned out their inane words and formulaic “poptimistic” indie song structures, it would be a tolerable soundtrack for buying chickpeas and earplugs. But to pay attention to these tracks and discern them from one another was a very difficult task indeed.
As the band played on, I felt my spirit leave my body. Luckily, the shift from track to track was generally signalled by a second or two’s silence in between songs. I was thankful for this, as again, it was the only viable means to tell the songs apart from one another. Rather than being transported by the music, my dissociation was necessary to endure the rest of the set.
Music reporting is usually a relatively safe pastime. Alas, my ears felt so sufficiently assaulted afterwards that I’d now feel well equipped for the post of a war-correspondent journalist.Upon leaving the gig, I was disappointed to find that, impossibly, the band’s name does not stand for Don’t Meet Again (these) Singers.
