All Music Magazine UK - Album Review - DMA'S – DMA'S
- Desh Kapur
- 12 hours ago
- 6 min read
WORDS DESH KAPUR
DMAS– DMAS
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DMA’S – DMA’S: The Sound of a Band Coming Home
There is something wonderfully perverse about an Australian band spending a decade being accused of sounding British, only to come along and make their fifth album sound like they’ve finally stopped giving a shit about the accusation.
DMA’S have never exactly hidden their influences. The fingerprints of Britpop, Madchester, shoegaze and that great, glorious British tradition of writing songs that make you want to put your arm around a stranger while simultaneously questioning every decision you have made since 1997 are all over their DNA. But on DMA’S, the Sydney trio seem less interested in proving where they came from and more interested in figuring out where they’re going.
And, perhaps more importantly, they sound like they're having fun again.
That matters.
Ten years after Hills End, Tommy O’Dell, Johnny Took and Matt Mason have reached the point where they can stop auditioning for the future and simply be DMA’S. The decision to call the fifth album DMA’S feels almost ridiculously appropriate. As Johnny Took has explained, there was a sense of coming home about the songs, particularly after people kept pointing out that the new material sounded closer to the band's earlier work.
Fine by me.
Give me a band rediscovering its own dirty floorboards over another bunch of million-dollar studio knob-twiddlers attempting to manufacture authenticity.
The album opens with “El Alamein”, and immediately there is that familiar DMA’S rush: O’Dell’s unmistakable voice riding over guitars that sound like they have been dragged through a late-night Manchester alleyway and come out the other side grinning. It doesn't hang around waiting for permission. There is no great cinematic throat-clearing before the band get down to business.
Then comes “My Baby’s Place”, and this is where the record really starts showing its hand.
It is nostalgic without being embalmed in nostalgia. Built around acoustic guitar and a warmer, more reflective atmosphere, it has the sort of melody that sneaks into your head while you're doing something completely unrelated and then refuses to leave. The song was also the band's first entirely self-produced track, recorded in their Glebe studio, and that DIY involvement seems to have loosened something in the machinery.
There is a vulnerability here that doesn't feel calculated.
And that's important because DMA’S have always walked a peculiar line. Their songs can sound enormous while the emotions inside them remain surprisingly intimate. O’Dell can be singing to thousands of people but somehow make it feel like he's telling you about his latest romantic disaster over a pint.
“Hurracane” pushes that emotional tension further. A bright mandolin flickers around the song while the band build towards another enormous chorus, giving the track a slightly different colour without abandoning the DMA’S template, like balancing the band's past and future, and that's feels about right.
It is familiar, but it isn't merely reheated.
And then comes “Killing Time”, which sounds like someone has kicked open the doors and let the guitars back into the room.
Fast, propulsive and built around a ridiculously infectious rhythmic drive, it is the kind of song DMA’S seem to produce almost by accident. The band have been described as increasingly comfortable with the rougher, more guitar-led side of their sound on this album, and “Killing Time” makes a fairly convincing argument for why they should stay there.
But if you want the moment where the record plants its Doc Marten firmly on the table, “Heatin Park” is it.
This thing is fucking enormous.
Named after Manchester's Heaton Park, it takes the old DMA’S ingredients — chiming guitars, big choruses, O’Dell's vocal — and throws them into a blender with a healthy dose of shoegaze. The result is heavier, dirtier and more aggressive than some of their recent material. stadium-ready, gritty distorted , It sounds like a band remembering that guitars are supposed to make your stomach vibrate. im sure Live, it will have the capacity to turn a crowd into one large, slightly drunk organism.
That is not marketing.
That's a song doing its fucking job.
From there, DMA’S refuses to become simply Hills End II: The Return of the Haircuts. “Emailz” pulls the tempo back and lets the emotional bruising show through. “One & Only” brings the guitars charging back in, while “Dancing Luck” takes a more acoustic, radiant route and becomes one of the album's more intriguing detours.
The latter is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that DMA’S don't necessarily need to turn everything up to eleven to make it work.
There is restraint here.
Not always, thank Christ, but enough to give the louder moments some actual meaning.
“Concrete” keeps things moving, while “Windows” finds O’Dell in more reflective territory. The song has the feel of somebody looking backwards while insisting they are moving forwards, which seems to be one of the central themes running through the record.
Then comes “Distance”, and suddenly the whole bloody thing becomes cinematic.
It is the sort of closer that makes you imagine the credits rolling while you're still sitting there staring at the speakers, wondering why somebody has put something in your eye. There is a melancholy underneath it, but it isn't miserable. It's reflective. Bittersweet rather than broken.
And that's probably the best way to describe DMA’S as a whole.
Bittersweet.
The band have been around long enough now to understand that nostalgia is a dangerous drug. You can spend your entire career trying to recreate the moment when everybody first discovered you, or you can acknowledge that moment, steal whatever was useful from it and move on.
DMA’S have chosen the second option.
There are moments here that will make longtime fans think of Hills End. There are guitars that seem deliberately designed to wake up anybody who has been waiting for the rougher-edged DMA’S to return. There are huge choruses, melancholy verses and enough indie-rock muscle to keep the old guard happy.
But there is also a looseness.
A sense that the band aren't trying quite so hard to be anything other than themselves.
That's perhaps why the self-titled approach works so well.
This isn't DMA’S pretending to be younger.
It is DMA’S understanding what they have become.
A decade into their career, they have gone from sweaty rooms to major stages, from Australian cult favourites to a band capable of filling some seriously large venues in Britain. Their previous two albums, THE GLOW and How Many Dreams?, both reached the UK Top 10, while the band have accumulated more than 500 million streams worldwide.
Yet DMA’S doesn't sound like a victory lap.
It sounds like a band opening the garage door again.
This is recognisably DMA’S, but with the machinery stripped back enough to let some of the personality through. moving between nostalgia, experimentation and rougher edges, evolving without losing the qualities that built their audience in the first place.
There is nothing revolutionary happening here. DMA’S aren't reinventing rock music. They're not going to discover the lost chord that finally makes Oasis comparisons disappear forever. And frankly, who cares? Rock music doesn't need another revolution.
It needs good fucking songs.
And DMA’S has them.
“Heatin Park” is the fist in the air. “My Baby’s Place” is the nostalgic heart. “Killing Time” gets the blood moving. “Hurracane” provides the giant chorus. “Dancing Luck” gives the album some breathing space, while “Distance” sends the whole thing disappearing into the night.
What DMA’S have achieved with their fifth album is actually much harder than reinventing themselves.
They've remembered who they are without becoming prisoners of their past.
In an age where bands are increasingly encouraged to polish every rough edge until they sound like an algorithm wearing skinny jeans, DMA’S feels refreshingly human. The guitars scrape. The melodies stick. O’Dell sounds like he's singing from somewhere slightly bruised. And when the big choruses arrive, they arrive like they've got somewhere to be.
Ten years on, DMA’S aren't trying to recapture Hills End.
They're reclaiming the part of themselves that made Hills End matter in the first place.
And if that sounds like coming home, well, maybe the Aussies finally found the fucking postcode.
Verdict: 4/5
TRACK LISTING
El Alamein
My Baby's Place
Hurracane
Killing Time
Heatin Park
Emailz
One & Only
Dancing Luck
Concrete
Windows
Distance
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