In conversation with Dananananaykroyd

Earlier this month in Brighton, we caught up with two of the finest live acts in the UK, let alone central Scotland, before they performed on the Levi’s OnesToWatch stage at Audio. First up were Dananananaykroyd’s Laura and Duncan.

Muso’s Guide: So were you here last year for The Great Escape?

Duncan: We were asked to come down but we didn’t have the money so had to pull out quite late which was a real shame so we are doubly excited for it this time.

It was my first time last year, so much going on that you usually have three or four options to go elsewhere if you can’t get in to something.

D: Did you struggle to get in at all?

A couple of times, I tried to get in to Bon Iver in a tiny pub and as he got a really good Uncut review a couple of weeks before I missed all but the last five minutes.

D: At SXSW Laura and I turned up to see Devo two hours before they played as we were really worried it would get full and it was like the biggest venue ever, some of our friends turned up five minutes before they came on and got in fine. We were just determined to see Devo, those two hours were alright…

Laura: We had some margaritas, it was fine!

I heard they went down well at ATP last week too.

L: They were amazing; I really wanted to go to ATP, we thought we might get asked to play and then we thought we’d have stuff on and then it turns out we didn’t. But we didn’t go.

There was a rumour Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud went going round…

L: Wow, I hope that’s true. Imagine her watching Errors (we all laugh, apparently she was seen watching The Jesus Lizard)

You’ve been doing a few under-age festivals recently, Like the Camden one in April?

D: We don’t do as many as we’d like to

L: I’d like to do the Underage Festival at Victoria Park.

From what I’ve seen at your gigs and lots of people posting about you online, you do seem to have quite a young fan base.

L: It’s great

D: I feel like our job is easier playing gigs to underage audiences as they aren’t so jaded, they come to have a good night. It’s so much easier to get them in to it.

At least you know they are not drunk, it’s Red Bull or nothing!

L: Did see some smoking outside at the Camden gig though, you have to be eighteen for that now. I got ID’d a couple of years ago for that by a guy before it went up from 16

D: So effectively it’s as if you were ID’d now. The same guy would think you look under 18 now

L: Yeah, totally.

How about plans for the rest of this year, will you be releasing the album on vinyl?

D: Yeah it’s CD only at the moment. The label is quite keen on the collectibles though.

L: I’d really like to, loads of people ask us and it would be amazing.

Last year 679 put out the Mystery Jets album 21 on vinyl seemingly quite reluctantly as I belive they only pressed 300 copies of it and now they aren’t even at the label any more.

L: I think 679 are fucking mental, Mystery Jets are an amazing band

D: Even without the personal connection (Laura’s husband Barry Hyde is the bassist in The Futureheads, who also left sixsevennine after their second album) Mystery Jets seemed to be on the radio all the time last summer.

L: They just have no faith in their bands that they’ve invested in.

At least now they and The Futureheads are on Rough Trade, a very good label.

Both: Yeah.

How about any new material, touring?

D:  Maybe a new song later in the year, October time it’s a bit vague though. We have only rehearsed once since last July and even then we didn’t play any of our own songs.

L: We did play ‘Black Wax’

D: True. Tour wise, Japan is definitely going to happen this year and Australia

L: We’d like to do America again, we don’t know when. We at least have a label in Japan and Australia though so, they can help sort us out.

D: The album’s not been picked up in the US yet so that needs to happen first, did get a good review on Pitchfork toady actually so that’s a start.

L: I’ve never really been a big reader of Pitchfork

D: It’s a shame there’s no comment section at the bottom

I think some people look at reviews mainly for the score, either to reaffirm their own opinion through agreement or complete disagreement. Now with things like Spotify why bother with the review when you can listen to it immediately. It’s very different from when I would read magazines and then go and seek things out, now I’ve hear a lot of things before the monthlies get round to reviewing them. Speaking of Spotify, do you use that much?

L: Yeah, I really like the shared playlist function. We’ve all actually made playlists and they are going to be on our forthcoming, proper website! It’s good for stuff like that; I don’t really use it for finding new stuff, more for listening to classics.

D: Anything that makes it easier for people to hear more music is a good thing and with getting our own stuff heard, it could really help.  It’s also a positive thing to know that so many people want to hear your album when/if it does leak.

A tempting factor is that if you haven’t heard it when other people have, you feel out of the conversation. I took the day off work when In Rainbows came out and that did feel like everyone was listening to something for the first time together

L: It is so rare that something like that happens now. Ours didn’t appear until a couple of days before it was released anyway.

I think that was off the NME’s streaming of it anyway, it wasn’t a great rip. It’s funny how when R.E.M. had a single streamed it didn’t get ripped for a couple of days. Maybe as the kind of people who are excited about a new R.E.M. are not the same as those who put MP3’s up on their blogs instantly. There’s already that kind of generational gap.

L: Yeah, Paul (one of the drummers) would probably be quite excited about new R.E.M. He used to have really long e-mails and essay competitions with his friend on why these are the best ten R.E.M. albums and why they are this in order and more importantly why you are wrong. They were really into it and geeky about it.

D: Are they going online as well? As a footnote?

L: Ha ha! yeah

D: An old band that I was in, a bit like Half Man, Half Biscuit, all very pop-culture reference heavy  songs and so on. We changed the lyrics to a George Michael song so it was a guide to the order that you need to buy Cure albums. The chorus was “You’ve gotta have Faith”.

L: Did you record that? I really want to hear it!

D: Yeah, it was about four bands back from now though.

(Pulp Fiction is playing in the corner of the room, Mia Wallace has just OD’d and collapsed to the floor)

L:  Oh God, sorry, this scene always reminds me, I was on a school bus home.

D: What has this got to do with Pulp Fiction!?

L: This kid said to me “Oh you look like Uma Thurman” and I was all “Ahh thanks!” but he added “after she’s had an overdose”

D: Cool

So how long have you been together now then?

L: Two-and-a-half years now.

D: It’s only been in the last year or so that we’ve had a record deal and the ability to do things that we want to. The EP (Sissy Hits) was supposed to be out at the start of last year and it ended up being late summer for example.

So in a way though it’s quite a good success story that it had enough people that believed in it once it appeared in January.

D: Yeah, it was a struggle but we got there.

L: Although by the time it came out it was almost over a year since we recorded it felt like we moved on and had started new material.

D: One of our band’s flatmates accidentally leaked it on to SoulSeek.

It’s so easy to do that. Even sending links via e-mail you can be traced with Google if people are looking for that track or album.

D: When we were passing about demos we had particular names to put in on iTunes

L: <giggles> Michael Bublé!

Something that no-one would look for then.

D: ‘Atmosphere’ by Russ Abbot

I used to think when I was younger that was a cover of the Joy Division song!

D: In that same band I was talking about before, not that I want to just talk about them. We did talk about covering both and doing a Double A side. If anyone’s bored at home, they should take that idea.

I saw you on tour with Foals late last year at Brixton Academy, and it was good to see the Wall of Hugs in such a large venue even if we were upstairs.

D: On that tour I was always getting Calum to make sure that the people sitting down hugged the person next to them. I think we did a good job of stepping up our shows to those larger venues; there is always more you can do though.

L: I think the European Kaiser Chiefs fans were more receptive to us than British Foals fans. Which is an odd thought but that might say more about the European music fan than it does about fans of those two bands though specifically.

Touring the UK again?

D: I think just touring for as long as we can handle it really! Pretty much.

I think it’s always a good idea to tour as much as possible between the first and second album.

D: Last year was the first year that live gigs generated more money than record sales. So it’s probably a good time to keep touring as well. I think we played 160th gig this week

L: So we have a bit of catching up to do of some other bands. Last year we did about two or three times as many as we had done before and I was finishing at university and people had jobs and so on, so that was mainly in the autumn anyway.

I think nowadays, any band putting out a second album after a successful first one has a little of the pressure taken off, especially now with the amount of money in playing live. That’s provided of course, that it’s not just coasting on the success of the first one.

D: I think for this album it was important that we got what we are doing live on the record and it’s closer than anything we’ve done before to that.  Despite that I do think we will consider ourselves a live band. I don’t think it’s difficult to enjoy it without the live experience but it just rounds it off. You need to get the balance right by being good at everything.

Dananananaykroyd are playing a number of festivals this summer including Reading/Leeds. Their debut Hey Everyone is out now and the single ‘Some Dresses’ is to be re-released this summer.