On DMA’S The Glow, Sydney, and the Beautiful Stupidity of Wanting More

Written In Reverb

Reverb is what happens when sound doesn’t end - it lingers.

It bounces off walls, fills the silence and leaves something behind. It’s what gives music its space, ache, emotions and haunting beauty.

Written in Reverb is a personal column about the records that stay. It’s about how music resonates through memory and time, how it latches on and leaves a mark. Call it one sided reviews, reflections - emotional archaeology. I’ve seen heartfelt tributes to Kurt Cobain, Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell and Taylor Hawkins pour out on social media in last few month, but Im not entirely part of that pain, but I can relate.

Vol. 5 — On DMA’S, Memory, and the Beautiful Stupidity of Wanting More

A love letter to DMA'S The Glow

I do not remember the first time I heard The Glow so much as I remember how it felt, when I did. I could go on and on about feelings and emotions music brings me, but this is not about me. This is about a gem of a band from Sydney. The city I called home for nearly half of my life.

That first time was like a flicker of electricity, softly and subtly re-wiring my brain, wanting more of what my ears just exposed me to. It was that specific type of winter in Sydney—grey, not cold. The kind where your jacket smells like somebody else’s cigarettes and your headphones are the only factor holding you in place from melting into the city. It was 'Criminals' playing on Triple J at the supermarket or in a fast-food joint checkout line. I don’t know, but I recall it literally dropping like a boulder and making me think that I could fall in love again. With a person who was exciting and kind, with myself, with the life that I experienced that winter. I lived on coffee and late responses. Photographing bands in rooms too dark for the lenses I had in my kit. Love only existed in the form of incomplete text messages, hung phone calls and the back of someones neck in a crowd. And then there was this record.

DMA’S The Glow glows in neon and phosphorus. The inside of your chest glows at walking just fast enough to feel alive. It’s an album of longing that will never apologise for longing. And why should it ever have to? It is not quite sadness. Not pretty heartbreak. But that big, messy, “I want more than I have” and “I don’t know how to ask for it” sort of ache. The kind of yearning that you can smell on a person.

The opening track 'Never Before' leads into the emotional rollercoaster that is this record. It spins in circles. “Stop me, I lost myself.” - Tommy O’Dell’s voice reverberates in your brain folds. This song is a trip. Its best enjoyed in headphones or played loud while spinning in your living-room or at a K-Mart parking lot - take your pick.

The title track is not that same. It lands like you know you’re about to outgrow a life you still face. A city night, light reflections in a bus window, the sort of hope that can be nearly mortifying. It sounds like you are saying to yourself in the back of your mind, “Maybe I can still change everything.” Underneath the melancholy is adrenaline, as if heartbreak itself could keep you warm. "Is anybody real? Does anybody feel?” Modern-day online connections. I view “chasing the glow” as a compulsion of checking your phone at night in search of that one message you’ve been wanting to see. As if the spiral you’ve gone down is starting to feel endless and the only thing pulling you out is the glow of that one person in your phone. Yet you forget that the glow is cold and lifeless compared to another human’s heat.

We need to talk about 'Silver'. This one is for walking fast with your head down, the headphones-too-loud kind of personal cinema. The lyrics are straightforward, in effect blunt - which is precisely how heartbreak feels. No poetry. Just impact. “I’m letting go, and I can’t get a hold of you.” Not a plea, but a kind of an epiphany. It is the point at which you stop holding the water in your hands and seeing it leak away. And yet - the song still lifts. Like the grief is pulling you forward instead of anchoring you down. A love song for those who left the door open to feelings, yet again. And an absolutely perfect follow-up to 'The Glow'.

'Life Is a Game of Changing' is a dance-floor epiphany track. The bathroom mirror moment: smeared eyeliner, and hair stuck to your lip gloss, telling yourself you are fine, for real. You’ve said those words before. You’ll say them again. But the beat is relentless. Whether you want to or not, the world keeps spinning round and round inside you. It’s the sound that mature adulthood isn’t a destination. It's a hallway and you just gotta keep walking. “Move to the sun with you”.

'Criminals' is soft heartbreak. This one is tender in the sense that only deep apologies are tender. It’s the after part. The late night kitchen conversation with refrigerator light on. The “we both know we care, but we both know we can’t stay” ending. It’s the sound of forgiving someone and knowing it won’t save you. This song sings the quiet dignity of walking away before you’ve been pulled in a new direction. “Tell me, do you need a partner? Coz the criminals are here”.

The one for the loop is 'Round and Around' - the almost, the try-again-once-more, the “maybe this time” nights. You know how you know someone’s bad for you, but every time they look at you, your whole chest opens around them like a window in spring? That. Desire as a carousel. No exit gate. Just motion.

To love this record is to remember yourself in your most hopeful and undone moments. That’s quite an Australian romanticism, though. The borrowed denim jacket, the dim pub, the cigarette on the fire escape, the taxi you almost didn’t get into. That feral seagull grabbing your sandwich out of your hand at Circular Quay, spring Jacarandas in bloom dropping their purple onto your feet. The dumbly charming stranger on the City Circle train, which could be your new adventure… or not.

For me it’s about being almost somebody. Being almost loved. Being nearly brave enough to change. And the glow? It’s not happiness. It’s the light you emit when you’re on the verge of becoming someone else. The shimmer before the transformation. The heat before the burn. And maybe the point with the glow is that it doesn’t last. It’s a phase. A flare. That you have a feeling in you is proof enough. Some people spend a lifetime getting back to that version of themselves, the person who believes in something entirely for themselves. Others are still learning not to chase it. But sometimes, outside… on a quiet enough walk, with the suitable song played under the proper light; you just get to feel it again. Just for a second. Just enough to know it was real.

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