PREMIERE: Darren Cordeux Reveals New Project Daz & The Demons

Fans of Australian alternative rock music released in the early 2000s know and love this name very well: Darren Cordeux.

Cordeux, the legendary vocalist of Kisschasy, has defined a generation's soundtrack with tunes like Do-Do's & Whoa-Oh's and Face Without A Name. Now, he hopes to make an impact with a brand-new project, Daz & The Demons.

Premiering a new tune, You Wait For Something, from his debut release under the Daz moniker, 8 Songs, Cordeux approached the project with this goal in mind: to “create a frame within which the listener can paint their own image”.

You Wait For Something is a relatable, jangly rock song anyone can relate to. Cordeux says, “This song, to me, could have multiple meanings - it could be that feeling of anxiety when you anticipate something awful will happen, in which case the song is a liberating reminder that such things rarely occur.

“It could also be that voice telling you to walk away, that this person, saviour, or change isn’t going to arrive, and you need to take a different path. Depending on the day. I can resonate with any one of the song’s potential meanings.”

A sucker for jangly guitars, Cordeux looked to his inspirations in Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, The Byrds and The Apples In Stereo and accompanied those influences with “a dissonance to the guitar notes, reminiscent of 1980s Flying Nun bands (The Clean, The Chills), which adds a little cloud to the sunniness of the song.” Cordeux is glad that the bass line never changes, as he challenged himself to build a whole song around the one riff in an approach inspired by The Velvet Underground.

Genevieve Patterson (keys/vocals) and Mackenzie Howe (guitar/vocals) provide backing vocals on You Wait For Something, and they are an integral part of the Demons’ sound that can be heard all over 8 Songs, Cordeux shares. “I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a community of gifted people, and while I was writing the album, I made a list of those who I’d love to have play in the band - luckily for me, everyone at the top of my list agreed!”

“After Kisschasy broke up, I moved overseas and essentially started over,” Cordeux starts. He wasn’t planning on becoming a solo artist, but then the Covid-19 pandemic saw him returning to songwriting to deal with boredom and isolation. “It also provided me a chance to reflect on my own life, all the happy and sad moments I hadn’t ruminated on, and find meaning through the writing process,” he adds.

“It became clear that no one else could, nor should, perform these songs but me. As I was tinkering away, I started to hear a sound emerge that was an amalgamation of my tastes throughout the years, a sound that was a true representation of who I am as a whole, not just as I’m going through some musical phase. This is why I wanted to put ‘Daz’ in the band name; I no longer needed to hide behind some protective veil. Daz & the Demons can grow with me.”

He continues, “Whenever I create something, I ask myself, ‘Does this need to exist?’ and the answer for 8 Songs is a resounding ‘yes’. It enriched my life to create it, it brings me joy to listen to it, and I believe it will do the same for its audience.”

By the time Kisschasy’s reformation at Good Things Festival in December rolled around, Cordeux had already written the material for 8 Songs. 

“Those shows gave me confidence and helped me realise that creating and performing my own music is the thing I enjoy most,” he says, “but the overwhelming response to the shows gave me the push I needed to finish them [8 Songs] and put them out into the world - something that is notoriously hard for artists, probably because that’s when we’re at our most vulnerable. Overall, I feel grateful that people have stuck with me as a songwriter, and I want to honour that by giving them what I consider to be my best work.”

You can check out You Wait For Something before its official release tomorrow below.