Formed in Merseyside in 2024, and consisting of Sam Warren (vox & guitar), Jamie Lindberg (bass & backing vocals) and Josh Grant (lead guitar), DBA! have emerged as an urgent guitar band noted for their unique chemistry and influences such as Eels, Beck, and Elastica. After sharing their debut single ‘sink or swim’ late last year, they have now announced their debut EP ‘skip! Worried’, set for release on the 29th of April.
Give us a pottered history of the band
DBA! was birthed in the heart of 2024, in Merseyside. A product of many layers of confusion, clarity, and chaos. The name is as much of a statement of intent as it is something to be unraveled, but don’t bother asking. At the start of 2024 we set out to build (I use the term ‘build’…loosely) a small demo studio in the dark and dingy basement of a Liverpool nightclub. It was a bit of a mad experiment, but there was something raw and great about it, a place for us to make a mess, to be as loud and as weird as we wanted – the strange blend of noise and nightlife. Us hiding in our drain, playing for hours on end, loud, next to a fish themed cellar section of the venue, usually full of topless techno heads with bottles of water and eyes like piss holes in the show.
During this time, whilst penning our first 10 or so tracks, I stumbled across a great studio via a few sparse / cryptic Instagram posts, posted from the POV of a Nan who runs a homely studio. A few months after immediately falling in love with this concept, and the look of the studio, and some of the music that was coming out of it, I was informed that said studio was literally on the top floor, above the nightclub.
Sophie Ellis, an engineer I’ve wanted to work with for years, that I’ve consistently just missed out on when she has been in Liverpool, was working too in this studio after returning from a stint of living in London. I’m quite the believer in things tending to be what they’re meant to be and I loved how this fell into place. Sometimes what you need is just a few steps away. So yeah we went into the studio, Nan’s House, and recorded 7 tracks with Sophie.
Since then we’ve been riding the DBA! train for the past six months, editing and mixing the tracks ourselves, playing a residency every two months at the Kazimier Stockroom in Liverpool & gathering a bit of a plan together for releasing our forthcoming EP, skip! Worried (which we drop 29th April, but more to come on that). Our first singles ‘Sinkorswim’ and ‘whisky’ have had a lovely introduction to the world with some support from the brilliant Huw Stephens, Emily Pilbeam & Craig Charles at 6 music, as well as some plays from a few other stations which I was not expecting at all, to be honest. So thanks to anyone reading this who has given the tracks a spin (Including you, listeners..)
How inspired you to start making music
For me, it’s the likes of Sparklehorse, Silver Jews to name a couple, those artists’ work that feels like you’ve just stumbled across something messy and fractured. There’s a tension in the music that we gravitate towards. Having said that though, I think the band has quite an eclectic set of influences for each of us, with us kinda loving anything with a raw and honest temperament at the heart of the tune.
And the one or maybe two records that inspired you artistically
If I had to pin down a record that has shaped me personally as a writer, right now I would probably go for The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “Take it from the Man!’ It’s the kinda inability to pinpoint a time period, or time zone it comes from, the record for me feels completely timeless and able to have came from any great period in music, and I find it to be a great example of an optimistic and upbeat record, but with a pulse of dark reflection running underneath the belly of it. If I had to pick another for right now, as it was Mark E Smith’s bday recently, I’d go with Grotesque by The Fall.
If you are trying to explain who you sound like to someone who hasn’t heard you, what would you say
I find this question to be really difficult to answer as I’m sure most artists do, and it is one of (if not the only) questions we get. So I’ll give it a go but I feel I’ll be far off. I’d say DBA! sound a bit like a rock and roll band, but stuck in an emotionally strained budgies cage, where someone keeps persistently launching guitars and cymbals at me while I try to make sense of it all. We are kinda pop traditionalists in the sense that the song revolves around a lyric and a melody, and I suppose there is shades of 90s-esque guitar sounds, sometimes maybe similar to Beck, Blur and Elastica, or maybe you’ll hear Sonic Youth type energy with a lot of purposeful noise. Yeah I’m not the best at this question, so please do go have a listen and let me know a better way of describing it. I don’t get this genre thing, the kinda post-bedroom-industrial-shoegaze-impressionistic pop playlists that Spotify throws at you nowadays, I just don’t really understand the categorising of tunes. I mean that from a genuine confusion, not a kinda moody type of way of answering things. If I was asked down the pub, I’d usually just say we are a guitar band.
Tell us about your new single
Our new single Whisky is out now, which I have described as a snapshot of that moment when everything goes up in flames, and you’re inside the wreckage, watching it all burn. It’s about addiction, escape and the sick wrongful sort of freedom that comes from sinking further into your own shit. It was recorded with talented Soph Ellis at Nan’s House, who if you can’t tell by now, we’re super fans of. It’s a kinda messy and cathartic amalgamation of emotions I guess and I suppose when I wrote it I was in a much darker place than I am now.
Where can we get hold of it
Usual DSP places! Not yet on physical but who knows, maybe one day a label will decide to work with us and print something for us (toes crossed)
Tell us how you write
Writing can be a really draining and relentless beast for me. Usually it’s words and a simple chord sequence to sing the melody too, that I’ll probably sit with for at least a good 6 months before it forms into something that is presentable to the band. It’s kinda like exploring the song, and finding out what the song is yourself, I don’t feel like I write them more like I find a way to navigate through them and make it safely to the speakers at the other side. Capturing an idea and holding it down with the rest of the band, feeding it and watching it all unfold like a lego set you get out the loft that you’ve lost half the pieces to, that you merge with another set you’ve found in your mates basement. A lot of trial and error. A lot of unexpected outcomes.
Tell us about your live show, what would be your dream gig
Live shows I suppose are where it all comes to life. We enjoy sharing directly our efforts with people and I think it can be a release and a purge for both us and the people we have there with us. We love to play in a sweaty crammed basement (shout out Sound Liverpool, RIP) playing with bands that carry a similar ethos to us and bands that we are just as excited to see as the crowd. We’re music lovers first and foremost at heart. I like to feel it in my bones
What can we expect from you in the near future
In the immediate future we will be releasing our EP skip! Worried on April 29th, that includes our first two singles and 3 other tracks. We hope to have a string of live dates to announce soon. More music, more shows, more of a laugh.
Tell us your favourite records that are rocking your headphones/tour bus/ stereo
At the moment I’m smashing Mannequin Pussy’s ‘I Got Heaven’ & Hamilton Leithauser’s new stuff (so great to see him back)
Check out the bands track Whisky, below:
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