#dzdeathrays

What’s your life like in Brisbane?

Shane Parsons: Well, I’m pretty much always touring! I actually live in Sydney now. When we first started the band, Simon and I were working for the Queensland government, doing office work. Any money we made working, we spent touring on the weekend. We would go down to Melbourne and Sydney and do shows. That was for four years or so until the point where we couldn’t work jobs anymore because we were touring so much. And now we just try to not have jobs, so when we go home we just write albums. This is our day job now, but it’s tough because there’s not much money in music. You’ve got to balance things as good as you can.

When I get home I just treat writing like a day job: shower, breakfast and then writing from 9 to 6 or so. Then I finish, have an evening with my partner and stuff. I find it quite a good way to work.

DZ Deathrays playing at Ebullition, through my old Canon.

Wait- where do you guys live now?

Shane: I live in Sydney, Lachlan lives in Melbourne…

Lachlan Ewbank: Simon still lives in Brisbane!

Shane: In a lot of bands in Australia everyone lives in different cities. You fly everywhere all the time.

Lachlan: It takes 10 hours to drive from where I live to Shane.

Shane: And then 12 hours from me to Simon.

Wow! Do you have to cross the desert?

Lachlan: Well, it’s a very boring drive!

Shane: If you were to go east to west, you would be crossing a desert. But up and down the coastline it’s still just really far.

Lachlan: So a 12-hour drive or a 1 hour and a half flight!

I guess it makes rehearsing complicated! Perhaps through webcam or something. (laughs)

Shane: If only the internet in Australia was good enough to do that! For this tour, we all just flew in to Brisbane and rehearsed here three days. Then we got everything ready for the tour, got on a plane and everyone left from Brisbane together. That’s how we do it! It’s a bit more expensive, but people’s lives end up changing, they end up going to different cities and all that stuff. At the start, we thought it was gonna be really hard to live in different cities, but it’s actually fine.

Lachlan: I feel like you can get more done, because you do so much writing on your own and you can sit with an idea longer, as opposed to sitting in a room and just jamming- you might not come with an idea, whereas at home you’re like “I’m gonna send this when it’s good enough to send it to someone”.

Shane: The other thing is, so many people do collaborative writing. You’ll notice that in Australia there’s so many artists who live half the year in Los Angeles, and just write and record over there. And then they come back and do shows in Australia, and then maybe do some shows in L.A. They actually tour more in Australia, but they live in L.A. because they can do so much writing over there with different people. That’s just how fast the world moves now, and how easy it is to travel.

Let’s talk about Positive Rising: Part 1. Firstly, does that mean we can expect a part two?

Shane: Yes, it’s done!

Lachlan: We finished recording Part 2 the day before Part 1 came out! It was a weird little feeling. We were celebrating two themes, it’s great!

Also, I wanted to know if the cover was real or photoshopped? Is it the real Australian desert? (ndlr: they laugh)

Lachlan: It’s photoshopped! But there is a real place that looks like that, but we didn’t take the photos here. That’s a photo of a place that is in Australia. Hopefully we can do something using that scenery for a video clip or something.

That desert looks very exotic for us Swiss people!

Lachlan: I know! We were in the mountains before, it’s so green and nice here!

I also wanted to talk about the first song or intro, Hi Everyone. I thought it sounded a bit different from the rest of the songs- what were you guys thinking while you were writing it?

Lachlan: That was the last one we finished in the studio.

Shane: There’s lots of different versions of it. Essentially, I just wanted to write a song that didn’t have a chorus- that just built up, built up, built up. The “Hi everyone” is the first thing I remember writing. And once that sentence was down, I thought “I want a song that’s introducing to everyone”! Like a grand opening to the show.

Lachlan: I find it also helps set up what to expect in the album. Lots of parts, different songs that you’ll hear in that one song.

Shane: And then it’s pretty punk towards the end.

I wanted to talk about one of my favorite songs from the album as well, A lot to lose. What’s the story behind it?

Shane: That’s one of the heaviest songs on the record. I think I had the riff ages ago, and it was a hardcore style thing. But then the lyrics are all about sleep anxiety, if that’s the right word. It’s like when you can’t sleep and end up thinking about not being able to sleep, and that sort of stuff. It’s funny, so many people that I told that to were like “Man, I know exactly that thing!”. It’s easy to have those thoughts, especially when I am writing and stuff, I end up thinking about things so often. You constantly go through things in your head. I am working out my brain a lot, but my body not so much because I am sitting at a computer all day working. And then I go to bed, and the cycle starts again! But yeah, that’s the story behind that song! I can’t even remember writing it, it was so long ago!

You guys have been making music for more than 10 years now. If you could meet the young DZ Deathrays who are just starting, what would you tell them?

Shane: Hmm… I don’t know! I probably would have told myself to learn a bit more about recording (laughs)! When we first started, recording was such a hassle. Now that’s all I do! I just wanted to play shows, so we spent the first few years just playing gigs, and whatever we put out was like a demo. I care a lot more about recording now. When you’re putting more effort with the songs, people react to it a little bit more as well. I can’t go back and change the past, it’s been a really good 10 years. It’s been hard work, but I think Simon always said “we’ll see where we’re at in 10 years, and if we’re done with it, let’s leave it. But if we’re not done and we’ve got ideas still, then let’s keep going.” Last year we’ve done a 10-year tour in Australia, and we had written up all these songs for this next album. Lachlan has been writing as well, and it just sparked everything. We thought “let’s keep going, do a couple more albums”. We’ll see what we do next after these ones!

What can we expect from DZ Deathrays in the future?

Lachlan: The part 2! A lot more guitar on that one!