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 ailing from Toronto, where the dance floors are notoriously as frigid as the weather, Death From Above 1979, were never a band to shy away from the controversial side of courting. They first raised eyebrows on their 2002 EP Heads Up (Ache), by declaring “we’re looking for wives/ so tired of sluts coming to us in the clubs with their cocaine,” on the track “Dead Womb.”
But with the release of You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine (Vice) last year, the band [Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger] became much more coquettish. Featuring tracks such as “Sexy Results,” an ode to office ladies and the mailroom boys who love them, and “Pull Out,” the boys are never far from working up a sweat.
The biggest song however, has been “Romantic Rights,” a certified club-banger up north that has received major airplay on music video stations. The band’s growing fame in the mainstream was also helped by a recent tour with ubiquitous Canadian rock band Billy Talent, a favorite of suburban tweens. Proving the band is in fact made up of grown-ups, bassist Keeler got down to business on the phone from Leeds. — Ryan Kennedy You guys have been doing a lot of touring lately, have there been any sexy results?
DFA: No. We’re not that kind of band unfortunately. Maybe unfortunately? Maybe very fortunately. We get lots of potential groupies, and it’s amazing how bold and unembarrassed people can be, coming up to you and saying “yeah, you make my panties so wet,” uh, “I want to fuck you tonight,” and it’s like, wow, you’ve removed any thrill of the hunt for me. I’m engaged and have a ring on my finger, and girls see that and they don’t give a shit. They just tell you straight up, “Me and my two friends want the two of you to come home with us tonight.” Do you think the ring actually entices them more?
Maybe some part of them is turned on by that additional challenge or taboo or something. It’s funny to think that they want to allow you to do whatever you want with their bodies because you play an instrument. For me, it’s my job. It’s a skilled trade, like driving a cab or being a C & C operator. But nobody’s offering their bodies to machinists. Is there any different approach between girls in the US and UK?
And in Canada too. Varying degrees of boldness, I’d say. In Canada they kind of hang back. They’ll make themselves very available but maybe not say anything, although when you get to Ottawa and Quebec they just come right up. In America, it’s a little more obvious, and then here in Britain, since everyone seems to have a fucking drinking problem, they’re all ready to go all the time. You’ve never seen people drink like they do over here. It’s like they just discovered alcohol. Every single day prohibition just ended, and they’re like “guy, there’s this great new thing, it’s called ‘beer’.” We’ve never seen it before, and we should drink every last drop that we can find, because it might be gone by tomorrow!” How do the Japanese react to two very sarcastic Canadians?
For the most part, the Japanese don’t understand English at all, so they don’t laugh at the humor. Even translated, things don’t really make sense. But they really enjoy the music, it’s a very honest kind of innocent enjoyment because you just have to like it on a very base level. When you were touring with Billy Talent, what was the audience like?
It was pretty weird being a part of that. We don’t cater to an older crowd, it’s just the way things work out, or maybe it’s just Billy Talent has never tried to play for a crowd that isn’t really young. It’s funny to be around children all the time. I wanted to talk about your days as a stockbroker, because I can’t think of any other rock musician with that resume. What were those days like?
Just like this. Working, parties and drinks. I smoked a lot of cigarettes back then. The stress level was a little bit higher, but it’s just a job. It’s just like any other job except it involves a lot more lying. Stockbrokers are pretty horrible people. They have a reputation for liking coke and strippers. True?
Surprisingly no. It’s a service industry, so you just end up talking to people a lot and making sure the client’s happy. You need people to trust you with their life savings, so you can’t come across as a fucking idiot or a drunk because you need to be up at 5:30 in the morning reading the Wall Street Journal so you know what the fuck is going on and you don’t lose their money. All joking aside, it was something I took really seriously because I was trusted with people’s life savings, and they were good people. Is it true your dad was in Steppenwolf?
My dad was the first guitar player in Steppenwolf. He quit because he said they weren’t really musicians, they were just drug addicts. They knew his reputation as a guitar player in Toronto at the time and they were from Oshawa [a nearby town], and they said, “come down and play with us.” They made it out like they were big stars, but they weren’t at the time, and he hated it so he quit. Is it cool to make love to your own album, or is that not cool?
I think that would be pretty narcissistic. What do you prefer to listen to instead?
Daft Punk. Something really beautiful and rhythmic, for lack of better words. Final question: you had to add the “1979” because of the DFA record label, do you feel like starting beef with them?
No, because in hip-hop, beef is through lyrics and songs, and this was not in raps or freestyles on the radio, it’s fucking memorandums faxed between lawyers. It was boring and shitty. We feel that if we actually talked, we probably could have made that problem go away a lot sooner. It’s not like Jay-Z making “Takeover” and Nas following it with “Ether.” Which would be much more exciting. n°
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