“We
formed about 3 years ago – Brian and I met through work, and me and
Yan used to jam together,” remembers Dallas Don't frontman Niall.
“Then we found Jenny on the internet and took her to a practice
room out in the sticks on a cold winter night. That’s not what it
sounds like...”
That's
exactly the kind of smut you should expect from on-the-up freak
pop-punks Dallas Don't whose most recent release, the rather
excellent Retrace this Place EP, perfectly brings the band's love for
well-crafted indie pop songs and post-hardcore noise into harmony,
as Niall explains.
“We’re
as influenced by Hefner, Seafood and Belle and Sebastian, as we are
by Fugazi, Shellac and Fucked Up. I think this means that people are
sometimes a bit confused about which side of that divide we fall on,
but it keeps it interesting for us, as we like melody as much as we
love heavy noise in songs.”
Coming
to terms with the two seemingly disparate aesthetics is what brought
the band to their current sound.
“Our
first demo was very much us figuring out what sort of music we wanted
to play. The second one was a bit of step up for us, and we’re
still playing songs like “Lesson” and “Phoebe Henderson” from
it live, but I think some of the tunes were a bit mismatched. The new
EP is more linked thematically through the lyrics and it just has the
strongest tunes we’ve written. “The Witches Stone” is the
poppiest song we've written yet and although “Solution” and “New
Wolf” are among the heaviest we've written, there’s still a
strong melodic element to them.”
Beside
the band's inherent sense of melody, one of the most striking
elements of the band's sound is Niall's strong Scottish accent,
something which also feeds into the lyrical themes in the songs.
“Lyrically,
the influence is a mix of my own experience, particularly from the
time I spent growing up in the North of Scotland, and re-tellings and
reimaginings of stories from local history, pop culture and everyday
life that help me to explore themes I find interesting, both
personally, socially and occasionally politically too.”
But
the band is very much tied to it's Oxford roots too; their last EP
was recorded by former Xmas Lights man Umair Chaudhry at a session
provided by winning Demo of the Month in Nightshift magazine. Oh, and
Umair came highly recommended by Dallas Don't's good pals The Cellar
Family. Singer and guitarist Jenny also goes on to champion the likes
of We Aeronauts, Salvation Bill, X-1, Agness Pike, Von Braun, Listing
Ships, Rhosyn, and Spring Offensive as among her favourite local
acts, adding: “I think that list alone highlights that there is so
much variety out there. Even though there is a definite “Oxford
sound” which has been perpetuated by the success of Foals and This
Town Needs Guns, Oxford is still a city that is keen to embrace
anything new and different.”
[Originally published in Oxfordshire Music Magazine, issue 23, May 2013]
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