The three-year wait for new DMA’S music is finally over, and fans of Australia’s indie rock trio have been rewarded for their patience in this 11-track self-titled collection that captures a vulnerable, mature expression of yearning and nostalgia.
DMA’S, the band’s fifth studio album, comes drilled with tracks that feel painfully personal and musically comfortable, drawing on the best of their earlier works whilst unafraid to try out a diversity of new sounds.
There’s no hesitation in getting the album started- opening track El Alamein throws us in the deep end with a chugging guitar and the straining, echoing voice of Tommy O’Dell setting the tone, their Britpop influences ever-evident. The production of this is pretty unique compared to the rest of the collection and, equally, DMA’s typical sound– almost grungy, the crushed vocal outro a far cry from the groovy indie classic Tape Deck Sick most from the genre would be familiar with.
I mentioned nostalgia as the feeling that this album left me with, and this all starts with My Baby’s Place, the second track and one of five songs released as singles before the album came out. Its dreamy intro sent me immediately back to my earlier teenage years, being introduced to The Night Cafe, an indie pop band who dominated my listening for a good few years. My Baby’s Place could fit right in one of their albums unnoticed, albeit with much more production behind the tune. Its lyricism is affectionate and simple, and the layering of vocals on this track makes it such a genuinely enjoyable listen. Effortless flows between verse and chorus, the overlapping of ‘I don’t want to stay here no more’ and ‘rewind’ creating this beautiful sonic landscape by the end of the track that gave me this strange sensation like looking back at the end of summer and realising what a great time you had.
Hurracane follows, a return to the more familiar acoustic DMA’S style, kicking in with a fun guitar melody that loops the track and carries you through the tune’s effortless narrative. Its repetitive, memorable chorus had me absent-mindedly repeating ‘You’re crashing through my heart like a hurricane…’ in the hours following my initial listen through, and it’s no doubt one of those songs that will slip right into an Indie Summer playlist and earn a ‘I recognise this, where from?’ when it gets played to your mates on a road trip. It’s a proper indie-pop track that works well alongside a couple of the others from this album.
We’re then taken to Killing Time, its stutter-start immediately gearing the song up to be a different style to what we’ve heard thus far, raising the tempo and energy in a way that really suits O’Dell’s voice. Its repetitive nature makes such an infectious groove out of the tune, whilst lyrics like ‘My head, louder than the speakers’ really encapsulate this stuck-indie-teen outcry the album is constantly digging away at.
With Heatin Park, we’re given yet another change in tempo, its groaning guitar and the addition of some heavier percussion making it a much more tactile listen that brings an entirely different energy to the album. Possibly the highlight of the album for me, there’s a clear desire to give breathing space for Matt Mason and Johnny Took’s instruments, a real tension in the sound that feels destined to be echoed by thousands from a field right from the opening twinges of the guitar.
Just as we’ve recovered from that, Emailz presents us with another breakneck change of pace, an indie-ballad with some real vulnerability, the emotional lyrics ever emphasised by the simple, repetitive instrumental backing. Unabashedly soppy, the echoes of ‘I’m doing it for you, I’m doing it for me’ are gospel by the end of its three-and-a-half-minute run.
That soppiness is paralleled in One & Only, which takes a more intense musical approach but is still a coy, shameless lovesong you can imagine even the most bucket-hat and Stone Island-wearing indie heads chanting along to, because DMA’S made it cool. I found myself thinking of Fontaines D.C.’s I Love You in the way it presents itself, the rocky roots evident but unhiding of its deep romantic lyricism.
Dancing Luck follows with the Aussie band’s stripped-back acoustic sound that, I think, made them so popular in a growingly overproduced genre. Abandoning a lot of the naive hopefulness in the vocals of some of the earlier songs, this track is just shy of four minutes of agonisingly resonant sound on O’Dell’s behalf. Concrete achieves much to the same effect, the instruments effectively directing you towards the lyrics that are so well written you can’t help recalling images and memories they apply to.
The penultimate song, Windows, feels like a quiet look inwards, the kind of simple acoustic ballad any teenage boy with a guitar will be familiar with having tried to write after a heartbreak. It’s a realisation of what the rest of the album, eclectic in sound, seems to be trying to figure out– the nostalgia the band is yearning for is good to remember, but unhelpful to hold on to and treat like the present. Lyrics like ‘Keep holding the memory of somebody else, and that someone is you’ really stand out because of this, a transition to a feeling of acceptance.
With Distance, the album’s last song, we’re gifted a much more conventional modern indie tune. It’s an energetic climax, scattered with catchy 1975-esque electric guitar solos and more traditional rock drumming, which make the album’s conclusion a head-banger as opposed to a tear-jerker. I’d be unsurprised if it’s Distance that makes it big off of this collection; it’s the epitome of what DMA’S does best wrapped up in a brand-new sound for them.
What impressed me about this album is how seamlessly the lyricism becomes the focal point of every track. It doesn’t feel in your face or cheap, despite having some pretty soppy and– for lack of a better word– unsophisticated expressions of romance. It’s this unapologetic authenticity that allows O’Dell’s singing, and by effect, the music that platforms and embraces him, to really connect with his listeners, and has done since their early music over ten years ago.
DMA’S are set to start touring their new album this month, through to early February 2027.
