DMA’s - Live at The O2 Academy, Bristol

Despite their Antipodean roots DMA’s have, like the Killers before them, been taken to a certain section of British music fans’ hearts.

There’s no questions as to why; they’ve made no secret of their British influences – and it shows. A sweltering, fervent, beer-throwing audience greets them as they take to the stage and launch into ‘Feels Like 37’ from the debut EP, the crowd being a mix of old Britpoppers and a younger generation. It’s a good reflection of the band’s melody-driven, confrontational, yet vulnerable sound that half the crowd stares reminiscently, while the other sings raucously.

Though ostensibly a three-piece, it takes six musicians to replicate the studio sound, but singer Thomas O’Dell doesn’t require any such assistance. His vocal performance is so uncannily accurate that if you didn’t know better you’d think he was miming. The perennial argument about whether or not having additional live members lessens the conception of a band (or is that just us?) wouldn’t be resolved on this showing. As stated, it is a very accurate representation of their recorded output, but there are exceptions; ‘Emily Whyte’, for example, is made to sound meatier, and better, in the live arena. Guitarist Johnny Took works through a procession of different but exclusively semi-acoustic guitars which gives the sound a texture that would be absent with only three.

All six are dressed unassumingly; t-shirts both long and short-sleeved, caps and tracksuit bottoms are the uniform, and crowd interaction is kept to a minimum with only a handful of song introductions. The band are obviously content to let the music to do the talking.

Sometimes it roars; ‘Do I Need You Now?’ is garnished with sky-scraping guitars, ‘Time & Money’ is extended with a superbly cacophonous crescendo and ‘Break Me’ is simply blistering. Generally speaking, the songs from the recently released second album For Now get a better reception than earlier efforts, although ‘Step Up The Morphine’ does get the biggest cheer of the night, while ‘Delete’ is accompanied by backing vocals from seemingly the whole room (although ‘In The Air’ runs it close).

It’s the highlight of the set, opening with just an acoustic guitar before the electric joins, adding to the tension. The line, ‘I’ll find the chorus now’, is literal enough to give the crowd enough time to prepare their hearts and souls, so when the band kick in as one it feels electric. Very well played, and if it’s not the closing number for their forthcoming festival and support slots the boys are missing a trick.

However, based on this showing, they’ll go down a storm regardless.