Interview DZ Deathrays: “We wanted a quick turnaround”

DZ Deathrays come to Reading & Leeds with brand new album ‘Black Rat’ in tow. Well, we say brand new, but the record has already been out in the pair’s – that’s vocalist / guitarist Shane Parsons and drummer Simon Ridley – native Australia for some time. “It’s not ideal,” admits Simon of the enforced delay. His band mate is a little more philosophical. “I thought it was a big deal,” Shane says, “but it happens so often to Australian bands that it’s just expected. Your record will come out in Australia, then a few months later in the UK, and then six months, maybe a year later, it’s America. It’s fine, it just means that we’ve done our tour in Australia, and now we can focus on the UK and Europe too.”

The new record follows not only debut album, ‘Bloodstreams’, released back in 2012, but also winter 2013 stop-gap single ‘Northern Lights’, which as Shane explains, was their way of apologising for album two taking a little longer than they’d planned. “We wanted to record the album last year,” he says, “but we didn’t have the songs ready and we were trying to sort a producer. Once you stop touring, it’s hard to get back and get that momentum again, so we really wanted to get new music out and back on the road again.”

With producer Burke Reid (who’s also worked on fellow Australian Courtney Barnett’s debut full-length) in tow, the pair decamped to a studio just outside Sydney at the beginning of this year. “We wanted a quick turnaround,” says Shane. ‘Black Rat’ was released in both Australia and the US back in May, just a few months after they began recording in January. “I think we’re going to try and do the same again for the next one.”