Album Review: DMA's - Hills End

Say what you will about Oasis, it's hard to deny that they generally managed to be engaging — even when they were repeating themselves. So the comparisons that have been — and will continue to be — drawn between Sydney's Britpop throwback DMA's and the Gallagher brothers' 1990s vehicle is not the damning with faint praise that it might at first appear to be.

It's not just that the much mooted DIY ethic that underpins the trio's debut album, Hills End — the story of three mates writing and recording songs in guitarist Johnny Took's bedroom and almost accidentally becoming a band — is doubly impressive once you discover how well crafted the finished product is. At the end of the day you judge the material on its merits, and these are considerable. The songs are lush with hooks, melodies and fuzz guitar, and vocalist Tommy O'Dell delivers an emotionally forceful adenoidal snarl that would give not only Liam Gallagher but also Alex Turner a run for his money.

To the extent that the album is pastiche, it is also both fresh and self-aware. First single, the acoustic ballad Delete, even has a vocal pre-chorus that ends with the words "I'll find a chorus now." And while the Oasis comparisons are apt, they should also be taken with a grain of salt; in the UK DMA's are labelmates with alt-J and The Temper Trap, and some tracks on Hills End — notably The Switch, with its plaintive melody shared by vocals and guitar — skim similar territory to those bands' headier pop reconstructions.