Newcastle trio Demob Happy on how "de-pedestalling" and the Joshua Tree desert informed new album 'The Grown-Ups Are Talking' • Interview • DIY Magazine

It’s Friday night in Newcastle, and two thirds of Demob Happy have parked up in the bar at the extremely swanky Vermont Hotel. First to arrive, guitarist Adam ‘Baz’ Godfrey has set aside two gigantic sofas for the band’s latest audience with DIY. Drummer Tom Armstrong is absent, on tech duties for an orchestra down the road, while singer Matthew Marcantonio awaits some mac and cheese croquettes, which arrive ten minutes into our conversation, coated in sriracha mayo.

Dining choices aside, the members of Demob Happy have a lot on their plate. Juggling part-time jobs and the full-scale commitment of being an independent band, the trio recently moved back to the North East after more than a decade based in Brighton. Moreover, they’re in the “dying, diminishing returns stage” of completing fourth album ‘The Grown-Ups Are Talking’. Matt clips his microphone onto an empty wine glass. “It’s been an absolute fucking mission,” he admits. He’s not complaining, though; nor is he exaggerating. The journey that followed 2023’s ‘Divine Machines’ has been fraught with obstacles, soul-searching and difficult conversations while simultaneously being given opportunities that include supporting heroes like Queens of the Stone Age and Death From Above 1979.

“On personal levels, there had been deaths, depressions, three years of build up to the third record… all this pressure,” says Adam, with specific reference to one particularly gruelling “tour of terror” that barely saw the band break even. “I know it sounds like, ‘oh, boo-hoo, you get to be a fucking rock ‘n’ roller for three months,’” adds Matt. “But who in their right mind could do three months of 16-hour days, and then have no money to take their girlfriends out for dinner or pay rent, and not be crushed. We had a chat and looked at ourselves in the mirror. ‘Well, are we gonna do this [anymore]?’”

It was a spur-of-the-moment studio visit to Rancho de la Luna - the house of the moon - that dragged Demob Happy out of their rut. When the storied studio’s owner Dave Catching offered them nine days in the isolation of the Joshua Tree desert at the very location that had been a “cultural touchstone” for their entire career, the decision was simple. At the drop of a hat, the flights were booked.

“We loved the idea of going somewhere remote, and what it would do to the mind,” reasons Matt. “When we went to Wales [to record 2015 debut ‘Dream Soda’], we enjoyed that enforced [remoteness], because there was no phone signal. It was like enforcing the ‘70s, and that’s the decade for us. I felt strangely at home there, and the vastness of it was crazy. Your sense of scale really changes there.”

This trip marked Matt’s 13th date with the desert. Between international touring and a home life split between the far ends of England, an irresistible force continued to repeatedly pull the frontman to the dry Californian heat. This time, it was the catalyst they needed to bring what was to become ‘The Grown-Ups Are Talking’ to life.

“I remember it being a proper scramble,” says Adam. “We kind of did the process backwards.” They ramped up background ideas that had been building to max out their timeframe, juggling urgency with playfulness while letting their creative juices flow. “[The process was] tighter than we’ve ever done it before,” recalls Matt. “Which brought problems further down the line.”

“We attach so many external factors to our sense of worth and fulfilment, when it needn’t be the case.”

— Adam Godfrey

That refocuses our conversation to Newcastle, where Matt has spent the past year relentlessly writing lyrics and tweaking the trio’s desert sessions to mould their fourth LP. “I’m living off savings at the minute, because I need to be working full-time on the record,” he explains. “It’s been such a learning curve of my own abilities. I must have mixed each song six or seven times from start to finish.”

Within the confines a traditional record deal, the liberty to jet off to Joshua Tree on a whim before embarking on such a surgical production process would likely not have been afforded to them, they admit. But this was the only way. Even the temporary saving grace of Rancho de la Luna could not stop Matt from confronting the truths much closer to home, that nearly caused Demob to come to a halt.

“I had to write all my lyrics and that was a whole process, because I’ve been going through massive changes emotionally, this year,” begins Matt. “I haven’t known where the fuck to write from. What is my intent as a writer? Why am I doing all of this? John Lennon once said that he got rid of his ego in psychedelic trips and therapy, and he realised that you have to have an ego to songwrite.

“Once you learn about yourself in therapy, all of the triggers and narratives that you’ve told yourself for 35 fucking years, you then realise that what you’ve created has come from those places. When you then go, ‘well, I’m gonna write some lyrics like the good old days’, that feels inauthentic. It’s like throwing out the old rule book… relearning how to be an artist, even from a fundamental level.”

One principle that took months of progress was getting comfortable with imperfection. Matt admits that “Something’s gotta give / I know” in moping ballad ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, where around 300 first verse ideas highlighted the frustrations plaguing the frontman. “I couldn’t make myself vulnerable enough. I knew the thing that had to give was me letting go of this, but I couldn’t let go of it while I had to finish it.”

Feeding into the bigger picture, the second half struggles of ‘The Grown-Ups Are Talking’ helped the band realise that their personal happiness need not be tied to the success of the band. There were the remnants of that underlying fear of failure that needed washing away, but the journey to undo that link was far from seamless.

Having this revelation while doing the exact thing - making a record - that they were trying to decouple from their self-worth created a particularly challenging juxtaposition. “We attach so many external factors to our sense of worth and fulfilment, when it needn’t be the case,” declares Adam. “No, we have intrinsic worth. Everyone, no matter where they’re from or who they are, deserves to have dignity and feel happy.”

“I’ve been in the toxic combination of attaching my self-worth to this thing and then having an absolutely punishing worth ethic, because the stakes are so high,” continues Matt. “‘You’re gonna work on this thing until you literally want to die, because your entire sense of being relies on this thing.’ That’s a hell of a motivator and a burden. It’s like running down a motorway with a fucking chainsaw-wielding maniac car behind you. ‘You better fucking run…’”

“Once you learn about yourself in therapy, all those triggers and narratives, you then realise that what you’ve created has come from those places.”

— Matthew Marcantonio

As Demob Happy embarked on this journey of “de-pedestalling”, the purest things about being in a band had the space to rise to the surface. The trio were arguably at their happiest during their allocated days for “fairy dust” - messing around with the toys, pedals and settings that Rancho de la Luna had to offer. “Of course you want to craft something, develop and nurture it, but it has to be done with a sense of play,” smiles Adam.

Take the “deserty, swampy” background noise of coyotes that filters through ‘Give It All To Me’, recorded on Matt’s phone. Or the atmospheric whooshing throughout ‘No Man Left Behind’, conjured up by the combination of muted guitar and wah pedal, before arguably the strongest riff in Demob’s history cuts through the knife-like tension. Adam’s squeaky saxophone work finds its way into ‘Little Bird’ and lead single ‘Who Should I Say Is Calling?’.

A lyric from that song also crowns the album with its title. “What modern rock band is doing a song like ‘Who Should I Say Is Calling?’, with a fucking sax solo in the middle?” questions Matt. “It was tongue-in-cheek, slightly cocky: ‘well, have you heard this fucking record? The grown-ups are talking’,” teases Matt. On another level, Adam points to the added maturity that has come with all their self-reflection. “The grown-up [versions] of ourselves are talking now.”

In ‘Don’t Hang Up’, Matt proclaims “I’m just a boy / Trying to find his feet,” before the dark side of his ego returns the call in ‘Who Should I Say His Calling?’, trying to blackmail its way back into Matt’s life. Does that make the ‘grown-ups’ a force for good? “Some of the songs were written from a perspective of a higher force, a part of your soul that knows more than you do, guiding you through stuff,” he clarifies. “In among all of that noise and madness, there’s a little kid who’s just trying to find something of himself.”

“Of course you want to craft something, develop and nurture it, but it has to be done with a sense of play,”

— Adam Godfrey

After all the noise, madness and aggressive peppering of riff-work that dominate their early material, Demob Happy have discovered the headspace to propel themselves onward. It’s one guided by peacefulness, enforced social media time limits, and other elements to foster a healthy balance. Right on cue, a party of nearly a hundred people gatecrash the lobby. “Shall we finish this conversation outside?” suggests Matt.

In the cold, calm December air, Adam notes the similarities with the feeling of the desert. “There was a peacefulness and serenity,” he remembers. “I finally got to hear my tinnitus on its own!” Half the world away in Newcastle, however, the boys are glad to be back on home turf, discovering the rock scene in a much healthier place than when they escaped to Brighton, shouting out their buddies in The Pale White and local hero Sam Fender.

But the desert still calls. For Matt, it’s the “freedom and attitude.” For Adam: “The mezcal, the ladies.” Rancho de la Luna helped keep Demob Happy afloat, and it will surely form an integral part of their future. They crave the chance to return, for even more fairy dust, refreshed and better prepared. “We know what the feeling needs to be,” signs off Matt. “It’s been an album of two halves. The fun that we had there, contrasted [with] the pain of the next bit, but it’s all a learning curve. We’re stronger for it.”

‘The Grown-Ups Are Talking’ is out now via Milk Parlour.

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