Beyond The Mosh

Settling on a table outside Melbourne's Grace Darling Hotel with DZ Deathrays, plus pints of beer (frontman Shane Parson) and cider (drummer Simon Ridley), the pair turn heads in a 'What band are they in again?' kind of way. Their reputations as booze hounds precede them, largely due to that clip for The Mess Up back in 2011 (during which both members take turns sculling Jägermeister shots). On performing while hammered, Ridley suggests, “Practise, man, you just get used to it,” while his bandmate opines, “I guess it is always a little bit looser when you get pissed, but if I ever get to the point where I'm just so drunk that I'm like, 'Oh, god, I can't even remember what I'm supposed to play now,' you know, that's the hardest thing. Like, 'Oh, shit! How does that riff even go?' That's happened to me sober, but I don't really let myself get too wasted before a show. Not anymore. We did a few when we first started where we were just hammered drunk.”

The first taste from Black Rat, the follow-up to DZ Deathrays' debut album Bloodstreams, came via their track Northern Lights, which dropped back in November last year. Is it about the cannabis strain of the same name? “No,” Parsons laughs, “Someone has said that [before], though.” Ridley suggests, “I think it was [Violent Soho's James] Tidswell. He was upset that we released a song with a strain of weed [mentioned in it] before they [Violent Soho] did.”

It also has to be said that long-time fans could be forgiven for doing a double-take when Northern Lights was back-announced on the radio. “It got people talking about it, at least,” Ridley offers. “That was kinda the plan. I think there's a whole bunch of songs on the record that people expect, but then there's songs like Northern Lights that they don't [expect]. And we wanted to put that out so we wouldn't get pigeonholed before the album even came out. You know, if we just released a classic – what people were expecting – they'd just be like, 'Oh, so the rest of the album's gonna be like that.'”

“After we released that song, we had people who had never heard us [who] really liked it,” Parsons observes, “and then we put out the next one [Gina Works At Hearts] and it's still just stepped up… Hopefully everyone's taking on board that we can do both soft and loud.” Parsons admits that he found performing Northern Lights live challenging at first: “It's starting to get to that point where I'm comfortable with it, but that was one of the hardest things – holding back – 'cause the set's usually just thrashing away. And actually to have a bit where you're like, 'I can just stand back and stand on stage and be cool and sorta let the sound go out there,' that was, like, way harder.”

If you've experienced DZ Deathrays live, they always welcome stage invaders. “Yeah, the crowd's 50% of the show,” Ridley enthuses. During the duo's Secret Garden Festival appearance earlier this year, Parsons points out, “For the first time, people were singing the backing vocals! You know the big “Oh”s in [Northern Lights]? That's what we were hoping for when we put it together. Si does it usually and then I was like, 'You know, it would be sweet if the crowd just sings along to that part, that would be nuts!'” Ridley contemplates: “And get everyone involved, I guess, in a different way to moshing.”

Northern Lights was produced by Andy Savours and recorded in London just after DZ (and Velociraptor, the other band Parsons and Ridley play in) showcased at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, UK, in May last year. “We spent a day doing that and then we came back and we kept writing and writing – all the rest of the year, for about six months,” Parsons clarifies, “and then in December we went and did pre-production with Burke [Reid]. 'Cause we were gonna go back to London, go record with Andy and finish it off, but just money and time and stuff like that – the songs were there but they weren't finished products. We needed some pre-production time, so we did two weeks of just drinking hard and…”

“Working hard,” Ridley interjects. The dudes really should look into getting sponsorship. “Oh, Sailor Jerry sent us out, like, 12 bottles,” the drummer confesses. Parsons recalls: “Oh, god, I couldn't do anything. I was like I was on Schoolies again!”

“It was funny 'cause Scott Horscroft was there and Matt Lovell and they were all moving in in the same week as well,” Ridley explains. “So during the day we'd be writing these songs and practising them and stuff, and they'd be setting up at the house and the studios. And at the end of the day everyone was kind of exhausted and just wanting to have a beer and it would always just escalate because we're all enablers, so [laughs]. And then Burke moved his stuff in maybe a couple of days later, and he's really into making cocktails so he has this briefcase and there's, like, shakers and everything. So we spent a week doing cocktails.” Parsons recaps, “We were just having frozen margaritas every night.”

Reid's cocktails weren't the only thing that DZ approved of and both band members admit they'd love to work with the producer again. “It was cool, 'cause he didn't go, 'Alright, so I want you guys to sound like this,'” Parsons tells. “He was like, 'Whaddaya want?' And we were like, 'Well, we kinda want the same record as the first one, but just better – kinda catchier.' And he was like, 'OK.' That'd be the one thing he said, was: 'All I want for you guys is, I just wanna see hooks everywhere.' He's like, ' I want songs that girls can sing along to.'”

Rest assured, Parsons and Ridley reigned in the boozing once they hit the studio proper. “We didn't drink,” Parsons promises. “We were working from seven 'til 4am every night just fanging it out and, yeah! Drinking a lot of coffee – a lot, a bad amount probably. I mean, most of the good parts in all the songs [happened] past, like, four in the morning. [Pauses] Well there was one night when we went out to the pub and then got shitfaced, came back, I did some vocals for a song and then we just kinda kept continuing getting shitfaced on that rum until four. And then the next day Burke just didn't get outta bed.” Ridley chuckles, “We had a day off that day.”

The opening title track on Black Rats channels a Beastie Boys kinda vibe. “Oh, glad you got that,” says Parsons. “We actually wanted to go for a 99 Problems, Jay-Z, thing at the bridge, but I really, really like Beastie Boys.” Second single Gina Works At Hearts is a return to the thrashy, dance-punk we've come to expect from DZ and this single was played on Zane Lowe's show on BBC Radio 1 the night prior to our chat. “We saw it on Twitter,” Parsons laughs. Ridley adds, “'Cause the BBC are really stringent about not swearing, they sent us through, like, a check of the edit with “fuck” that they'd taken out of it. And I approved it last night, went to sleep and woke up in the morning and they'd already played it!” Given that the BBC is a commercial radio station, Parsons points out, “They're just like, 'After midnight you can do swearing,' [laughs] whereas when you listen to triple j in Australia it's just – you can have anything [in your lyrics] and they just do a language warning. I remember being a kid and my dad used to listen to triple j – he doesn't anymore, he listens to talkback and he's old, haha, but when he was a bachelor and I was, like, 13, I'd just sit in the car and hang out and listen to that and, yeah! I remember I'd be in the car and there'd be a lot of swearing and he'd be like, 'Ohhhh,' turning it down.”