DMA’S Come Home to the Yard - Manchester
- Luke Storey
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
The Yard, Manchester – 25 August 2026
WORDS / IMAGES LUKE STOREY
There are few things better in music than seeing a stupidly long queue outside a venue on a Tuesday night. Not Friday. Not Saturday. Tuesday. That’s when you know people actually want to be there. No excuses, no weekend plans sacrificed, just a bunch of people prepared to stand around Manchester waiting to get into a yard to watch three Australians sit on high stools and play some songs.
And bloody hell, what a good idea that turned out to be.
DMA’S have been coming to Manchester often enough that Tommy O’Dell joked that the city might as well be their second home. Looking around The Yard, I’m not sure anybody was about to argue. The place was packed with the sort of audience that doesn’t just know the songs but appears to have memorised the bloody DNA of them. DMA’S shirts everywhere. DMA’S caps. DMA’S devotees. This wasn't a room full of people who had wandered in because there was nothing on Netflix.
This was the faithful.
The occasion was the launch show for the band’s self-titled fifth album, (Check out All Music Magazine UK's Review Here) a record released just days earlier and deliberately positioned as something of a return to their roots. The band themselves have described it as a kind of coming home, reconnecting with the sound that first made people fall for them.
And where better to celebrate that than The Yard?
The Yard is exactly the sort of place where a show like this works. It’s not some enormous room where you spend half the evening trying to identify the band through binoculars. The performance took place outside, in the actual yard, with the crowd crammed in close enough that personal space became a slightly theoretical concept.
It was hot, tight and gloriously uncomfortable.
In other words, perfect.
There were no great walls of amplifiers. No rock-star theatrics. The three members of DMA’S simply took their seats on high chairs and settled into a stripped-back acoustic performance. It was relaxed, almost casual, but there was still that unmistakable DMA’S charisma hanging over the place.
Then came Killing Time.
The opening chords were enough to send a ripple through the crowd, and by the time the song properly kicked in, it was obvious that this new material had already begun to occupy that dangerous territory where a new song stops being new. The track, with its faster, guitar-driven attack, has been one of the more immediate songs from the new album, and live it had exactly the kind of momentum you want from a DMA’S tune.
Then the old songs started rubbing shoulders with the new ones.
Heatin Park got the kind of reaction you'd expect from people who have already decided it's one of the records' big weapons. It has a rougher, more feral guitar sound than some of the band's more familiar material, and even stripped back it retained that bite. The song was originally an old forgotten demo that the band rebuilt into something much heavier, which perhaps explains why it feels like DMA’S simultaneously remembering where they've been and kicking the door into somewhere else.
Then came Emailz, one of the quieter, more reflective moments on the new album. On record it's dreamy and delicate; in this setting it became something almost conversational.
Concrete also landed beautifully, proving that the new album isn't simply some nostalgia trip dressed up in a new sleeve. There's a looseness to these songs, but there's also confidence. The album has been described as a mixture of nostalgia, experimentation and the rougher edges of the band's songwriting, and hearing the songs stripped down made that balance even clearer.
But here's the thing about DMA’S.
They don't really need a hype man.
They've got Manchester.
Every time the band stopped singing, the audience took over with a deafening “D-M-A’S!”
Again.
And again.
And again.
You could have taken the microphones away and these people would probably have carried the entire bloody show themselves.
By the time Windows arrived, the room had become one enormous choir. The new single, which had been released earlier in August as the final preview of the album, suddenly sounded less like something fresh from a record and more like another entry in the band's growing catalogue of songs that people have claimed as their own.
That's when the chairs became irrelevant.
The band stood up.
The crowd erupted.
And for one final song, this supposedly stripped-back, acoustic album launch became a proper DMA’S show. The voices went up, the band gave everything they had, and suddenly The Yard didn't feel like a small Manchester venue anymore. It felt like the kind of place where a band and its audience had reached some private understanding that didn't require pyrotechnics, video screens or twenty-foot speakers.
Just songs.
Good bloody songs.
There is something increasingly refreshing about musicians doing this. No elaborate production. No desperate attempt to manufacture a “moment”. No giant stage separating performer from audience.
Just three musicians sitting a few feet away from their fans, playing songs they've written, while those fans scream the words back at them.
It shouldn't feel revolutionary.
But somehow it does.
DMA’S have played much bigger rooms in Manchester, and they undoubtedly will again. Yet there was something special about seeing them like this: close enough to see the expressions, close enough to feel the reaction of the room, close enough that the whole thing felt less like a concert and more like being invited into the band's living room — if their living room happened to be an overcrowded yard in Manchester.
The show was short. It was minimalist. It wasn't designed to demonstrate everything DMA’S can do.
And that's precisely why it worked.
This wasn't about proving anything.
It was a thank-you.
A little reward for the day-one fans who have stuck around, bought the records, filled the venues and continued to turn up whenever DMA’S come anywhere near Manchester.
And judging by the response, they would have followed them into a bloody car park.
Maybe that's the real secret of DMA’S.
For all the talk about albums, singles, production and evolution, when you strip everything away, what remains is a band with songs people genuinely care about.
On a Tuesday night in a cramped Manchester yard, that was more than enough.
In fact, it was everything.
DMA'S TRACK LISTING
El Alamein
My Baby's Place
Hurracane
Killing Time
Heatin Park
Emailz
One & Only
Dancing Luck
Concrete
Windows
Distance
FOLLOW THE DMA'S
Comments