The truth is that, without exactly looking like a display of originality, DMA’s They didn’t get off to a bad start at all, making an obvious apology for that 90’s indie-pop with a foot and a half on the inscrutable paths of Britpop. The Australians made shameless (and almost fanatical) apology for groups like Oasis, Gene, The Charlatans, Cast, Happy Mondays or Embrace on records that were not very avant-garde but looked as good as they were “Hills End” (Infectious, 16) o “For Now” (Infectious, 18). With the passage of time, the group was gaining in popularity and also rising, betting on an ambition that now, misunderstood, overflows every line of this work.
“How Many Dreams?” It is an album of excesses, both in production and in airs and sights that aim at a broader public after lowering aggressiveness in exchange for softer, more accessible and, at times, even honeyed forms and manners. Everything, under the protection of a greater presence of synthesizers and electronics as a novelty in the equation. A risky bet that definitely does not crystallize, propping up a record that is completely dispensable and, at times, even cloying and difficult to digest. And that the matter does not start badly, with two of the best pieces of the lot attracting attention: “How Many Dreams” and, above all, a “Olympia” with echoes of Morrissey and catchy guitar picking with its own weight.
It is later when, unstoppable and wallowing in their own inertia, mediocrities of the type of “Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend”, “Fading Like A Picture”, “Year Vacancy”the (almost salvageable) romantic epic of “Get Ravey” or some “Dear Future” y “Forever” which refer to the worst versions of Glasvegas and Richard Ashcroft respectively. It is at the end, in the song selected to act as an epilogue, when the trio is definitively unleashed and shows off their new outfit openly, with the verticality of rave “From Carle” distributing wax after that excess of mellowness and previous sugar so difficult to digest. So much so that it lightens, even in part, the global bad taste left by the product.
The trio made up of Tommy O’Dell, Matt Mason and Johnny Took do not make up a band capable of changing anyone’s life nor will they be remembered as an extraordinary group, but instead they once knew for sure what their creative position was and they took a profit that none of the followers of the aforementioned groups was capable of disgusting them. Now DMA’S resonate as the umpteenth band that believes itself capable of filling a stadium after sacrificing its best virtues, in a miscalculation that leads to a record that is mostly boring and a tad embarrassing, signed by a band that seems confused and, of course, looks very little credible.