'We’re Not Rockstars'

20 February 2015 | 10:57 am | Steve Bell

"I still live with my girlfriend at her mum’s house."

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The last few years have been a wild ride for Brisbane-based duo DZ Deathrays, the friends – Shane Parsons (vocals/guitar) and Simon Ridley (drums) – having blitzed all-comers with their hyper-energetic brand of dance-punk. Just a few years back they were a fixture on the Brisbane house party circuit, now they’re just as likely to be found hobnobbing backstage at festivals in London or New York as they are in some beer can-strewn backyard.

“I guess in the beginning we just wanted to make something for house parties where we could just play and it would be fun,” Ridley recalls. “But then after a while we thought, ‘Let’s try and go as far as we can with this,’ and after that it was just working jobs so that we could go and play shows to nobody down in Melbourne or whatever. It was always that kind of progression from the outset.”

This early ambition paid handsome dividends immediately, their hybrid of rock and dance earning global accolades pretty much everywhere they ventured. Having achieved so much traction Ridley sees little point altering this successful formula too dramatically.

"I still just feel like it’s us making music for us and our friends to enjoy."

 

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“I always hated bands when I was younger that changed their sound,” he smiles. “I think that DZ has always been a party band, so as long as it can exist within a party atmosphere we should be fine. [2014 second album] Black Rat was always written as a nighttime record – there’s thrashy moments for early in the night when everyone’s energetic, and then there’s slower songs for the end of the night when everyone’s kinda lethargic and boozed out and that sort of thing. In my mind, Northern Lights is like a 3am song, and that’s how we wanted it to flow – it has dance elements, it has rock elements.

“Shane and I both like going to see crazy rock bands at the start of the night when you’re boozing hard, then you go to a dance club and just hang out, and then you go back to someone’s house and just listen to chilled-out music – that’s how we approached Black Rat. We always wanted it to be a nighttime sort of thing. So I think we’ll always keep it like that – music that’s appropriate for partying or nighttime.”

Does all of the success achieved in such a relatively short time – such as winning an ARIA for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal album for Bloodstreams in 2012, and Black Rat last year – add pressure to the creative process?

“No, not at all,” Ridley laughs. “I still live with my girlfriend at her mum’s house – we’re not rockstars or anything. It’s still just us having fun. There’s no gigantic gains or losses to be made – I still just feel like it’s us making music for us and our friends to enjoy. That kind of sounds selfish, but it’s got to be – if we don’t enjoy the songs then why the fuck are we making them?”