by Mat and Rob in late 2001 in Birstall, Leicestershire (unofficial capital of Rock’n’roll), DMB have released their third album in two years with the eminently charming Boom Times!
The album has an attractively understated opening – See You In shuffles into your conciousness like a guest popping their head round the door, unsure of their welcome as Graham Coxonesque vocals weave over soft chords before finding the confidence to launch into a sedate but glowing indie ballad.
Songs such as Start it All Again, Coniston and Standing Back, Facing Forward feel a lot like Athlete with chugging guitars under thin, earnest vocals. This is also Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips territory – a mix of the unassuming and the sublime, dreamlike without being twee, especially in the moments when arrangements drop out of the mix leaving only a few sad chords on a piano or suchlike to play and fade like departing ghosts.
Elsewhere, in its brighter moments, the album is a fine example of indie-by-thoroughly-nice-blokes, the kind of thing that wends its way quite happily through the lower reaches of the charts (think Idlewild, Embrace, and Athlete again).
The stripped down arrangements by this two piece work well – it’s still the sound of a full band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards) but without the fussy tinsel and baubles of excessive overdubbing – it’s a musical Ronseal, doing exactly what it says on the tin, and the songs are stronger for it. One highlight for me is He’s Heading Back into Town, a slow but powerful track that wouldn’t be out of place on a Snowpatrol album.
DMB seem to be plying their trade without the benefit of expensive videos, advertising campaigns or strikingly lit photo shoots, and in this way they have a spirit of the Victoria Amateur about them, crossing unknown continents purely for the thrill of it. It’s a romantic notion, although it would be nice to see them picked up by a radio station, tossed into the charts and corrupted… just a little.