Dallas Don't OMS Feature

“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]

http://www.back2left.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/oms-23.pdf

Dallas Don't - Retrace This Place EP

(Self-released, 2013)

Songs about burning witches tend to be a bit of a downer, don’t they? Well, no actually, and certainly not in the hands of chipper indie-types Dallas Don’t whose debut EP, `Retrace This Place’, spans the post-Libertines landscape of guitar-oriented music, with a healthy dose of angst and angular noise thrown in for good measure. While the band hinted at something along the lines of a singalong on their previous demo (`Fife For Life’), opening track ‘The Witches Stone’ is a brighter representation of Dallas Don’t’s catchy songwriting abilities, infusing a familiar chord progression with bouncy, wonky charm and singer/guitarist duo Niall and Jenny’s boy-girl vocal dynamic.

But things get really interesting when the band allow the feedback to rage on the Mclusky-esque ‘Solution’, Nial sounding like the vitriolic Andy Falkous had he been born about a hundred miles north. Plumming further back, the final two tracks sound like they could have been plucked from Idlewild’s `Captain’: wonderfully scrappy guitars, frenetic drumming, and an undercurrent of emotional urgency (‘Screaming At The Sea’) and tension (‘New Wolf’).

 

Sometimes you expect a band to go one way and they go another; Dallas Don’t’s previous demos suggested that they would go down the weirder Cellar Family route but they’ve actually reached a pleasant plateau where they exist on their own terms, balancing light and dark with a prototypically indie framework and the occasional urge to make an abrasive racket. `Retrace This Place’ will either hit you immediately or require a few listens, but sooner or later Dallas Don’t will put a spell on you.

 

[Originally published in Nightshift magazine, Issue 212, March 2013]

http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2013/mar.pdf

 

Dallas Don't - Demo

(Oxford Demo, 2012)

Dallas Don’t join such fine company as Agness Pike, Junkie Brush and The Cellar Family as the newest member of Oxford’s oddball punk pack with this, their second demo. ‘Lesson’ has the drive and melodic undertones of early Idlewild (before they turned shit) and singer Niall actually sounds a bit like a harsh and whiskey’d-up Roddy Woomble, while ‘The Runner’ has Surfer Rosa’s loud-quiet-loud dynamics, wiry, amelodic guitar leads and damaged male protagonist lyrics.

‘The Ballad of Phoebe Henderson’, on the other hand, has all the serrated edge and energy of Shellac fronted by Andy Falkous – before going a bit Idlewild again. On ‘Fife for Life’ the band take a slightly left-field turn into contemporary indie jangle-pop, full of self-depreciating, wordy verses that seem destined to become a sing-along at some open mic session at a lock-in. It’s a mixed bag of charming turns of phrase and cloying attempts at charming turns of phrase but it’s a pleasantly controlled end to the demo and at the very least shows the range that Dallas Don’t are clearly capable of.

Not exactly revolutionary stuff, then – Dallas Don’t are pretty much the sum of their (excellent) influences at this point – but it’s good to know that they’re about and kicking up a stink in our fair city. This is a great starting point for this young band – now let’s hope that Dallas do become as weird and noisy as I expect they can become.

[Originally published by Music in Oxford, 11/3/2012]
http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2012/03/11/dallas-dont-demo/