Death From Above 1979: “We needed to see if there were real fans out there”

Next week (8th September), Death From Above 1979 return with one of the most anticipated albums of the last decade - the follow up to their 2004 debut and cult-hit, ‘You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine’ - ‘The Physical World’. It wasn’t an easy decision, though.

“We needed to see if there were real fans out there; real, active, excited people, and not just people talking about us on the internet,” explains half the duo, Sebastien Grainger. So they made a live return before embarking on new music.

“It was sort of an experiment initially,” says Jesse F. Keeler. “When we started playing together and once our band was available to book again… does anyone actually want to see us when it’s possible to, or is it something people just talked about? We didn’t know. We were just sort of following along and seeing what happened.”

And once the reunion proved to be a success? “We knew we could just keep playing the same songs!” he jokes. “At that point we’d just be the best Death From Above covers band ever; not an actual living band, making music. We wouldn’t have been interested in continuing if we weren’t making new music; if the band still wasn’t a living thing. I wanted to make more music. There was an unfinished business creatively.”