Music Is To Blame: DMA’s Live at Brixton

March 6th 2020, just before the madness struck and the world went into lockdown, the Aussie band DMA’s took to the stage at the London O2 Brixton Academy, exactly a year later, they brought out their 2nd live album, ‘Live at Brixton Academy’, released digitally and on limited edition vinyl.

DMA’s played their biggest headline show to date before the release of their third studio album The Glow, which was released in April 2020. Performing major hits such as ‘Step Up The Morphine’, ‘Delete’, 'In The Air', ‘Play It Out’, and ‘Lay Down’, the Aussie trio also performed a part of the new album ‘Life Is a Game of Changing’, ‘Hello Girlfriend’, ‘The Glow’, and ‘Silver’.

Live at Brixton is definitely a treat for the fans of DMA’s, considering the current state that we are in now, it's nice to have the feeling of remembering what a gig was like, what it felt like being in the crowd with your mate, pint in hand, and listening to your favourite band sing your favourite songs. I would consider myself just an average listener of the band, I can’t stay I know every single song by DMA’s or every single song that was on this setlist, so personally, I felt myself drifting when listening to this album, especially during songs that I didn’t know so this is definitely for the fans and would recommend to someone who was a big fan of DMA’s.

The disappointing thing was that nothing was majorly attention-grabbing during the album, it felt rushed in a sense, I don’t know if things were cut out during the production process but it definitely felt like it was lacking that interaction between the band and the fans which I find to be important. There were moments where Tommy O’Dell, the lead singer, would let the crowd sing a line from some songs, this can be heard during Feels Like 37, Step Up The Morphine, Timeless, and Lay Down. It would have been nice to have heard that crowd interaction but it doesn’t mean the fans were not enjoying themselves throughout the entire album/set as there are immediate crowd responses throughout the entirety of their songs and you can hear them singing throughout each song, this was nice to hear as I feel like its boring when you can’t hear the crowd singing/interacting and that is what really makes a live album for me.

A negative part I found from listening to the album was the production quality, I felt throughout the first 4 songs, it didn’t sound the best, it just reminded me of the quality of watching your gig videos back on your phone but I must say it did give it that authenticity but it’s not what I expected from a live album. The bigger and more well-known song such as ‘Silver’, ‘The Glow’, ‘Step Up The Morphine’, ‘Delete’, ‘Life Is a Game of Changing’, ‘Play It Out’, and ‘Lay Down’, were the best produced on the album. Sometimes it would be hard to hear the vocals or you couldn’t hear the guitars over the drums.

Overall, I think the setlist was put well together, the first few songs had a very upbeat vibe and got the crowd excited but the trio knew when to slow it down and calm the crowd down when it came to the section of the setlist which includes songs back to back such as, ‘The End’, ‘Step Up The Morphine’, and ‘Delete’, and then slowly built back up again and I think ‘Life Is a Game of Changing’ and ‘In the Air’. They included their biggest hits, played some songs from their first 2 albums and playing some of their new album as this tour was to promote the new album ‘The Glow’.

I would highly recommend anyone who is a DMA’s fan to listen to ‘DMA’s Live at Brixton’ as this would be something they would highly enjoy, I would find it hard to recommend this album to anyone who is an average DMA’s listener and only knows some of the bigger songs, which I enjoyed the most to listen to, but this has definitely made me want to go and learn more DMA’s songs so I can enjoy the album for every song and not just the bigger hits.