Daryl Braithwaite Selfies, Trying To Play Toto Songs & Jumping Dogs

DZ Deathrays

"We hopped in the car before and we were on the radio!" DZ Deathrays frontman Shane Parsons enthuses. We've commandeered a sequestered booth inside Fitzroy's hip Bar Liberty and rose is our chosen refreshment of the day. The duo, which is rounded out by Simon Ridley on drums, are visibly stoked that their third album Bloody Lovely is ready to drop and we just need to know in what sort of context Parsons' girlfriend's dad uses the ocker phrase that inspired the title of the band's third album. "It's just something that he says quite often," Parsons explains. "Like, if he had this wine he'd be like [takes a sip], 'It's bloody lovely, isn't it?' He uses it all the time. And I always thought... [When] Simon and I first started a band we were like, 'Alright. How do you describe our music? Evil fun'... And then it's kinda like, 'Oh, Bloody Lovely will be a bit like that.' And then just, you know, no one else has got a record called Bloody Lovely," he laughs.

We're tipping old mate must be loving the attention as well. "I don't think he knows," Parsons admits. "[My girlfriend's] mum is more internet savvy, so she'll, like, read the interviews and she'll see stuff on Twitter and she'll go, 'Did you know the boys named the album after what you say?' And he'll go, 'Oh, really? Okay.'"     

Two Bloody Lovely album tracks have already dropped and blown our faces off: Shred For Summer landed last August and was followed up by Total Meltdown in November. The accompanying music videos for both of these singles were directed by SPOD. "Usually we come up with the ideas and we'll try and find a director or someone who can make the idea happen," Ridley informs, "and, like, when you work with SPOD you just ask him what he wants." 

The video concept for Shred For Summer basically came about because SPOD wanted to use an old-school machine about which Parsons enlightens, "You run the footage through and you can control it with faders to do what you want... It's actually a physical thing rather than, like, a digital effect." Ridley then notes that SPOD particularly loves "cheesy '80s stuff".

So what about the clip for Total Meltdown? Ridley tells, "[SPOD] wanted to hire some dudes that did 3D creeps... and it turned out they were really hard to hire. And he really wanted to get into it, so he was like, 'Nah, I'll just do it!'"

"It took a long time to do the animation," Parsons adds before Ridley points out, "And he was learning to do it at the same time!"

"We just filmed the bit where we were walking down the street and then walking into the bar," Parsons continues.

"And then I feel like he just threw that in at the last minute; he just needed a segue for us to get into the bar," says Ridley. "It's just: 'Leave it to you, Mister SPOD, and you can do what you want!'"

But this scribe's favourite track from Bloody Lovely at the moment is Like People, which is basically a list of things that annoy Parsons recited over a curly riff that echoes the verse melody and thunderous, ever-changing drum patterns. When this opinion is shared, Ridley marvels, "Aaayyy, that's the next single!" and Parsons admits he is actually reeling off "things that kind of piss [him] off". "Not just things that happened to me, but things that happened to other people," he clarifies, "and, yeah! I was like, 'You know what? People are fucking shit! People are really annoying and frustrating.'" The singer/guitarist already had a chorus melody in his head, but says the lyrical inspiration materialised while he was going for a run. "It's the most close to heart, lyrically, song that I've written on this record," he observes.

Even though Bloody Lovely still oozes with sinister rock'n'roll riffs, fans may notice a slight shift in tempo. "One thing I do like about this record is that it's really good to walk to and there are certain places where, like, it's a strut thing," Parsons acknowledges, "and I really like that. So even the newer stuff that we're doing, it's, like, finding that nice bpm where you can cruise down the street on your way to work to it. So, not everything has to be thrashing out in the moshpit; it's kinda nice to have songs that you can powerwalk or dance to, you know? Even though it's a rock song."

These days, both DZ Deathrays members are based in different states: Parsons in Sydney and Ridley in Brisbane. When asked what sort of impact this had on their songwriting for Bloody Lovely, Ridley chuckles, "It's probably why it took four years!" 

DZ Deathrays recently wrapped up appearances on the touring Falls Festival line-up and managed to score a selfie with Daryl Braithwaite. "Oh, yeah, Dazza!" Ridley extols. "That was at Falls, Perth. The Australian bands — everyone was like, 'Oh, guys, Dazza!' [laughs] You know, secretly spying on him, watching what he's doing. But he was a legend!" So how was The Horses received? "He extended it," Parsons reveals. "It's probably about six, seven minutes [long]. It's great! He brings it right down. It's a banger, you know, and he knows what everyone wants. He's like, 'I can't understand how I deserve this second chance, but somehow the Australian young people have cottoned on and it's now, like, I'm playing Falls Festival!'… You don't see [second chances] happening too often, especially these days — there's so much music!"

Given that Braithwaite didn't write The Horses, our discussion turns to cover versions and the fact that sometimes it's not until you actually try to play someone else's song that you realise its degree of difficulty. "It's like trying to play drums to Toto," Ridley offers. "Africa, I can't even play it! When you hear the song, you don't even think of how most of the time the drum beat is so, like, hard and technical... And that's why every now and again when someone tries to do a cover it's flat and boring, 'cause they just can't get all the nuances. Unless you get really great musicians," he laughs. Parsons mentions another Toto track Rosanna and the drummer stresses, "I can't play their stuff!"

"If there's a song that I really enjoy, I just try and learn the chords," Parsons admits, "and I sorta didn't do that for a long time and then I forgot, like, where you take inspiration from. When I was a kid, I was always busking and I had all these ideas coming because I was just like, 'Oh, that's how they did it,' and psychologically it's always there. But then when you just only learn your own stuff; you kind of get to the end of the road a little bit... So when I started learning Tommy James & The Shondells' song, which I really love, like, Crimson & Clover: it's just one of those songs that, ever since I was a kid, I loved and I wanted to learn, like, just the chords. It's super-easy and it's just nice to see how things fit. And then I learnt a Blur song." Which one? "Out Of Time. I really love that song. It's a great song and, you know, it's nice just to see how songs were written. And when it's simplified down to chords and vocals, it gives me inspiration and you don't have to have, like, a hundred different chords, you know? It can actually just be two.

"Like Total Meltdown, on our record, I mean, it's got an insane amount of note changes in the verses and I really love that — I really love the sort of riff that I was playing, and it was interesting. And I showed Burke [Reid, producer] the riff and he goes, 'That's good. Let's work with that, but just keep it like that the whole way through.' When I got to the chorus, I was like, 'This is too hard and too many things going on.' So that's why I had to simplify it to just pretty much four chords.

"But it was just one of the things where I had to keep whittling it down 'til it was four chords. I was like, 'I'm just gonna simplify it, because the chorus needs to be big and simple.' And then the chorus comes in, and it's the interesting thing that comes in, and that's the thing that sort of weaves and moves through the four chords." 

Since releasing their previous Black Rat album (2014), DZ Deathrays have also spent a lot of time touring abroad and performed in China for the very first time at Concrete & Grass Music Festival in Shanghai. "That was awesome, man," Ridley gushes and Parsons concurs, "That was cool," before enlightening, "We had to change a lot of lyrics". After DZ Deathrays signed the paperwork that was required and obtained the correct visas, Ridley confesses, "It seemed dodgy goin' in there and then they asked us, 'Oh, you have visas, but just when you enter make it look like you're not a band sorta thing.' But once we got in there, it was awesome!"

"It's funny, because in China… the most popular genres are shoegaze, metal and pop," Parsons shares. Ridley finds some footage on his phone. "This is us standing on stage just watching Thurston Moore do his thing. And he had the bass player from My Bloody Valentine and Steve [Shelley], the drummer from Sonic Youth as well!"

"We were in South America," Parsons references another region they toured for the first time, last December, "and people come out and they're so excited for it, because no one goes there! I mean, it's kinda scary if you can't speak Spanish and, you know, it's pretty crazy — who knows what's gonna happen? I mean, we were there with, you know, a government group and had people sorta looking after us, but still — crazy shit happens! But, you know, you go there and people are just awesome, they LOVE music and they're so grateful that you made the effort to go there… We were doing dive bars and it was, like, packed. And first time we ever played in New York there was no one, and we're playing in Santiago and there's a full room!"

Time's up, but we need to know how the shot on the Bloody Lovely album cover was captured. Tell us about the jumping dog? "She belongs to the owners of the bar," Parsons reveals. Ridley interjects, "And the owners were just there hanging out while we were doing the shoot." Parsons: "And someone was just throwing a ball…"

"So we were just throwing it around for the dog…"

"Yeah, she'd just flip out and jump and sorta miss it. The ball actually was originally right between Simon and my head." (Said ball's since been Photoshopped out.) "It's a really great little bar called Love, Tilly Devine," Parsons continues of the location. "But that shot was one of 600 shots. Well, in all honesty, like, Simon and I look like we're half-cockeyed and if there's a dog jumping in the picture then that has to be the one, you know? [laughs] It's an action shot, so…"