Shane Parsons - DZ Deathrays (05/05/2014)
With their new LP 'Black Rat' out now, The 59th Sound caught up with Shane Parsons of DZ Deathrays.
You finished up with SXSW last month, what’re you guys doing until you leave for the UK?
We leave in 3 days to go to the UK, pretty much just chilling out until then. It’s going to be a pretty intense tour over there, so I’m having a few days resting, packing my bag, making sure my gear and stuff is sweet for the tour. We’ve got two days once we land, and from then on, we’ve got a show every single night. We get back, have 2 days in Australia and then start our Australian tour. It’s kind of like we don’t really stop until the end of May, it should be pretty full on so we’re making sure these last few days in Australia are pretty relaxed.
'Black Rat’ comes out on the 2nd of May, how do you think that will play into your live shows, when the fans actually know the songs that you’re playing?
We’ve sort of put together our set lists for the next tour and it’s kind of half-half, so half old stuff from the first album, and even a couple songs from our EPs, and the the other half is new stuff. It’s really fun to play the new songs, some of them have extra guitar parts which I guess is a bit different, so we’re going to have a couple of friends jumping up on stage, filling in those little guitar parts, they’re subtle but they’re necessary to the song to get them to sound as close to the record as possible.
With the first record, you were pretty much counting on being able to play the songs live by yourselves.
Well the first record was all songs that we had been playing live, most of them for a couple of years, so they were as they already were with the live stuff, we recorded them like that. This way was a little more backwards to that; we wrote the songs, didn’t play them live, played them in the studio, changed them around a bunch, added parts and then we came out at the end of it like “alright, how are we going to play it live”, so it was kind of a different way of doing it, and of course it was fun. You go into a studio and not have that thing in your head where you’re like “oh no, we won’t be able to play it as a two piece”. We sort of had to just say that we didn’t care about that, if a song sounds good with an extra guitar, then we’ll put an extra guitar in there, we’ll figure out having someone else play it. We’ve jammed a couple of times with some friends, and having them play another guitar on the top of the guitar, it sounds huge, so it’s kind of fun to bring that extra level to it.
How do you think that has changed the sound of the album compared to the last one?
I think this record is definitely different in terms of tone change, with guitar and drums. We were changing snares and we were tuning toms differently and adding cymbals in after, with guitars, each section of the song or even a section of a riff would be two different guitar tones, so I had to split riffs in half and play the low notes at one tone and the higher notes at a different tone. When you listen to the song you can’t really notice it, but something that sounds the same the whole time kind of wears your ears out. We really wanted to stay away from that because we are mostly just guitar, drums and vocals, so we
wanted to have it always kind of change. It was different, with the first record we just sort of plugged in, played and then changed it around a little bit, added a few little extras on top, but most of the time it was really a similar tone the whole way through the album, whereas with this record, it’s way different, it changes all the time.
It’s a more melodic record than the first one.
Yeah there is a lot more melody and also a bit more singing, there’s some screaming and stuff in there but I kind of pushed myself to sing a little more in this one. It was different, it was interesting to do it like that because if I listen back to the new record now it still sounds to me like it has energy and everything, which is what i was always worried about; if I didn’t have a sort of growl, scratchy sort of vocals, that I would lose that energy. But
yeah we made sure that we captured that sort of raucousness, I’m just yelling over the top, still melodically rather than just screaming it.
How do you think the fans are going to react to the difference between the two albums?
I don’t know man, it’s hard to say. All of my friends who i’ve shown are really into it, and everyone has been really positive about it so far. I think some people might be a little pissed off that it’s not the same as the first record, but I feel like its not a huge departure from the first record, its a little more polished, things are a little tighter.
It is more of an evolved sound, but when you put out your first single, ‘Northern Lights’, it’s not what anyone expected from the band.
Yeah that was a bit of a trial, to see what people would do.
Is that why you chose to put that one out first?
It was more that that song was one of the first that came together to the point where we were happy to release it. We wrote it, and we were like “yeah this song is ..different, for us”, but it’s the song that was pretty much ready to go, so we went into the studio and recorded it and put it out. we just wanted to show that we could do something a little different, and not just be a one trick pony. If we were going to put out a new song, a lot of people would have just expected to hear riffs and thrashy cymbals and screaming over the top, which is what we love doing. We wanted to get one of those songs out there that
shows that we’re able to do something a little more melodic, downbeat, and that one is really wide sounding, extra layered with the guitar and stuff all through it, it’s gotta be the softest song on the record, it’s like a ballad, we kind of said that while we were putting it together, that it was like a ballad.
I saw an interview at the Big Day Out launch party where you said that you only had one song so far, and it’s a ballad. The rest of the album must’ve come together pretty quickly since then.
Yeah, that was the first one, we had a bunch of different songs that were nowhere near ready, and that’s what the rest of the record is. There was one other song, which was a heavier song that was pretty much ready and didn’t change too much while we recorded it, but the rest of it was bits and pieces of songs, we wrote some and then we rewrite it, and then rewrite it again. I rewrite the vocals and rewrite the vocals again, we just kept going and changing a lot of the songs until we were like “yeah, now I’m happy with how this song is and I reckon I could stand to listen to it and play it for a couple of years and not be sick of it” so yeah, it took about six months I think to kind of get that all together. Then we did pre-production at the studio before we went in to the actual studio and that was really important to us to get everything locked down and ready. It was good to do that.
So it took 6 months for the whole album, how long would it take for one song? For example ‘Gina Works At Hearts’, how long did that take from writing to polishing it up and finishing it?
That was actually one that was written quite late in the piece - in November or something. It was just a riff that I wrote at home, then I wrote the chorus as well and those lyrics sort of stuck with me, and I started working on it. It’s a simple song, it’s only a couple of parts but when we went in and started working on it, simon was into it and we jammed on it for a couple of days, then I did a couple of vocal things on it. When it was first written as a demo, it was really pop-punk. I didn’t see it as a single but we thought it could be cool for the record and we just left it at that. We went in to the studio to work on it a bit more, got into pre-production and changed the drum beat around, and the drum beat was sort of krautrock themed. That kind of changed it from being this pop-punk song into more like a driving rock song. When we got to the studio, we added the extra guitar on top and then it went from being happy pop-punk to something more bad sounding, moody with a touch of goth in the choruses, and then after we put it all together everyone was like “this could be a single now”. You never know which one it's going to be until they’re all put together and even then, everyone has got a different opinion of that they think of the best song that would showcase the record.
What are you looking forward to most about the Australia and UK tour?
I don’t know, to be honest that whole run of a month and a half is awesome. In the UK we’re touring with our friends Blood Red Shoes, I haven’t seen them for a fair while now, since may last year, and we toured with them in 2012. They’re good friends of ours now so I’m really looking forward to that, getting to play back in the UK, we’re playing some big rooms which is good. Usually in the UK we’ll play pretty small rooms, and because we’re opening for those guys we get to get on the big stage, which is nice. And getting back to Australia is also exciting due to the fact that we haven’t done an Australian tour of our own in ages.
Cameron D’Antone
You finished up with SXSW last month, what’re you guys doing until you leave for the UK?
We leave in 3 days to go to the UK, pretty much just chilling out until then. It’s going to be a pretty intense tour over there, so I’m having a few days resting, packing my bag, making sure my gear and stuff is sweet for the tour. We’ve got two days once we land, and from then on, we’ve got a show every single night. We get back, have 2 days in Australia and then start our Australian tour. It’s kind of like we don’t really stop until the end of May, it should be pretty full on so we’re making sure these last few days in Australia are pretty relaxed.
'Black Rat’ comes out on the 2nd of May, how do you think that will play into your live shows, when the fans actually know the songs that you’re playing?
We’ve sort of put together our set lists for the next tour and it’s kind of half-half, so half old stuff from the first album, and even a couple songs from our EPs, and the the other half is new stuff. It’s really fun to play the new songs, some of them have extra guitar parts which I guess is a bit different, so we’re going to have a couple of friends jumping up on stage, filling in those little guitar parts, they’re subtle but they’re necessary to the song to get them to sound as close to the record as possible.
With the first record, you were pretty much counting on being able to play the songs live by yourselves.
Well the first record was all songs that we had been playing live, most of them for a couple of years, so they were as they already were with the live stuff, we recorded them like that. This way was a little more backwards to that; we wrote the songs, didn’t play them live, played them in the studio, changed them around a bunch, added parts and then we came out at the end of it like “alright, how are we going to play it live”, so it was kind of a different way of doing it, and of course it was fun. You go into a studio and not have that thing in your head where you’re like “oh no, we won’t be able to play it as a two piece”. We sort of had to just say that we didn’t care about that, if a song sounds good with an extra guitar, then we’ll put an extra guitar in there, we’ll figure out having someone else play it. We’ve jammed a couple of times with some friends, and having them play another guitar on the top of the guitar, it sounds huge, so it’s kind of fun to bring that extra level to it.
How do you think that has changed the sound of the album compared to the last one?
I think this record is definitely different in terms of tone change, with guitar and drums. We were changing snares and we were tuning toms differently and adding cymbals in after, with guitars, each section of the song or even a section of a riff would be two different guitar tones, so I had to split riffs in half and play the low notes at one tone and the higher notes at a different tone. When you listen to the song you can’t really notice it, but something that sounds the same the whole time kind of wears your ears out. We really wanted to stay away from that because we are mostly just guitar, drums and vocals, so we
wanted to have it always kind of change. It was different, with the first record we just sort of plugged in, played and then changed it around a little bit, added a few little extras on top, but most of the time it was really a similar tone the whole way through the album, whereas with this record, it’s way different, it changes all the time.
It’s a more melodic record than the first one.
Yeah there is a lot more melody and also a bit more singing, there’s some screaming and stuff in there but I kind of pushed myself to sing a little more in this one. It was different, it was interesting to do it like that because if I listen back to the new record now it still sounds to me like it has energy and everything, which is what i was always worried about; if I didn’t have a sort of growl, scratchy sort of vocals, that I would lose that energy. But
yeah we made sure that we captured that sort of raucousness, I’m just yelling over the top, still melodically rather than just screaming it.
How do you think the fans are going to react to the difference between the two albums?
I don’t know man, it’s hard to say. All of my friends who i’ve shown are really into it, and everyone has been really positive about it so far. I think some people might be a little pissed off that it’s not the same as the first record, but I feel like its not a huge departure from the first record, its a little more polished, things are a little tighter.
It is more of an evolved sound, but when you put out your first single, ‘Northern Lights’, it’s not what anyone expected from the band.
Yeah that was a bit of a trial, to see what people would do.
Is that why you chose to put that one out first?
It was more that that song was one of the first that came together to the point where we were happy to release it. We wrote it, and we were like “yeah this song is ..different, for us”, but it’s the song that was pretty much ready to go, so we went into the studio and recorded it and put it out. we just wanted to show that we could do something a little different, and not just be a one trick pony. If we were going to put out a new song, a lot of people would have just expected to hear riffs and thrashy cymbals and screaming over the top, which is what we love doing. We wanted to get one of those songs out there that
shows that we’re able to do something a little more melodic, downbeat, and that one is really wide sounding, extra layered with the guitar and stuff all through it, it’s gotta be the softest song on the record, it’s like a ballad, we kind of said that while we were putting it together, that it was like a ballad.
I saw an interview at the Big Day Out launch party where you said that you only had one song so far, and it’s a ballad. The rest of the album must’ve come together pretty quickly since then.
Yeah, that was the first one, we had a bunch of different songs that were nowhere near ready, and that’s what the rest of the record is. There was one other song, which was a heavier song that was pretty much ready and didn’t change too much while we recorded it, but the rest of it was bits and pieces of songs, we wrote some and then we rewrite it, and then rewrite it again. I rewrite the vocals and rewrite the vocals again, we just kept going and changing a lot of the songs until we were like “yeah, now I’m happy with how this song is and I reckon I could stand to listen to it and play it for a couple of years and not be sick of it” so yeah, it took about six months I think to kind of get that all together. Then we did pre-production at the studio before we went in to the actual studio and that was really important to us to get everything locked down and ready. It was good to do that.
So it took 6 months for the whole album, how long would it take for one song? For example ‘Gina Works At Hearts’, how long did that take from writing to polishing it up and finishing it?
That was actually one that was written quite late in the piece - in November or something. It was just a riff that I wrote at home, then I wrote the chorus as well and those lyrics sort of stuck with me, and I started working on it. It’s a simple song, it’s only a couple of parts but when we went in and started working on it, simon was into it and we jammed on it for a couple of days, then I did a couple of vocal things on it. When it was first written as a demo, it was really pop-punk. I didn’t see it as a single but we thought it could be cool for the record and we just left it at that. We went in to the studio to work on it a bit more, got into pre-production and changed the drum beat around, and the drum beat was sort of krautrock themed. That kind of changed it from being this pop-punk song into more like a driving rock song. When we got to the studio, we added the extra guitar on top and then it went from being happy pop-punk to something more bad sounding, moody with a touch of goth in the choruses, and then after we put it all together everyone was like “this could be a single now”. You never know which one it's going to be until they’re all put together and even then, everyone has got a different opinion of that they think of the best song that would showcase the record.
What are you looking forward to most about the Australia and UK tour?
I don’t know, to be honest that whole run of a month and a half is awesome. In the UK we’re touring with our friends Blood Red Shoes, I haven’t seen them for a fair while now, since may last year, and we toured with them in 2012. They’re good friends of ours now so I’m really looking forward to that, getting to play back in the UK, we’re playing some big rooms which is good. Usually in the UK we’ll play pretty small rooms, and because we’re opening for those guys we get to get on the big stage, which is nice. And getting back to Australia is also exciting due to the fact that we haven’t done an Australian tour of our own in ages.
Cameron D’Antone