Review: DMA's @ O2 Academy

By Sean Lawrenson, Second Year English

Last Monday, the Australian indie rock band played to a sold out crowd at Bristol’s O2 Academy, alongside resounding support from both Mia Wray and Stone. The evening could perfectly be described in these three stages: Mia Wray brought indie-pop energy to the forefront, Stone played their emphatic punkish set and DMA’s wowed us with banger after (well, you know how the phrase goes). 

I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by both support acts on the night. It was clear that the crowd were not quite at full capacity for Wray’s set, but still she remained unfazed and put her all into the set. Stone, though I hadn’t listened beforehand, were simply amazing: the energy they brough to the venuewas the perfect set up for DMA’s. When the Australians came on stage, the crowd already seemed as though they were halfway through another acts set.

Beginning their set with the extremely upbeat, guitar heavy track, ‘Olympia’, it did not take long for the mosh pit to form, which grew gradually throughout the course of the evening.It’s interesting just how much a mosh pit can add to a gig, often by many it seemingly takes away from the experience (which I completely understand), but there is nothing better than a ‘good’ mosh pit. This gig was the perfect example of that. Never overstepping the line, but genuinely enjoying the music at the same time. Every so often, in between songs,vocalist Tommy O’Dell would have his occasional puff of his vape, turning his back on the audience to do so.

It was the in the final third of their set where things began to shift in tone. Whilst it might be particularly easy for a crowd to mosh along to tracks like ‘Get Ravey’, there was a strange point when the band played ‘Delete’, an acoustic song, with lyrics like ‘Don’t delete my baby, don’t delete her still, in the quiet of nothing’. Now, try moshing along to that song and the gig might honestly have fallen apart. But it was how quickly the crowd changed which was most fascinating to me. As soon as those first lyrics were sung, it was like being at a completely different gig altogether. People started swaying, got on other people’s shoulders like a festival. It was incredible to see. Placing this after one of the band’s most well-known songs ‘Tape side deck’, a mixture of up and down, was in my mind an inspired choice.

Of course, this didn’t last long and we were back to moshing with ‘Feels like 37’. By the encorce, they probably could have played ‘Delete’ again, and maybe the crowd would have been moshing anyway, such was the energy by the end of the night. Finishing on a trio of songs, ‘Step up the Morphine’, ‘Lay Down’ and ‘Everybody’s saying Thursday’s the Weekend’ led to a rapturous applause from the audience. I left the O2 with a feeling that whilst I had come to see DMA’s, I was more taken back by how impressive all three of the artists were on the night than anything else.

Featured Image: Sean Lawrenson

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