Die! Die! Die! have just returned from a European tour front man Andrew Wilson calls their "best yet". That tour came off the back of a break-up, reformation and release of their fourth studio album, Harmony. UTR caught up with Andrew to find out why their latest tour was so awesome and what the Die! Die! Die! has planned for the future.
Hey Andrew, how’s it going?
Yeah really good, just you know, back.
How does it feel? Is it nice to be home?
It is good, it just takes a little bit of time to get used to you. I’ve got to go to work now - I arrived straight back and I’m straight back to work. I also moved out of my house so I’m back living with my mum and her husband who is quite unwell so it’s a bit of a bummer. It’s not really the rock and roll lifestyle we’ve been living for the past few weeks.
You guys seem to really enjoy the gruelling nature of touring, right?
Yeah I do, I really enjoy it. I guess you’d have to ask the rest of the band as to whether they enjoy it. It was (Michael) Logie’s first time, he joined the tour half way through. But yeah, me and Mikey (Prain) have been doing it for you know, eight years now – the gruelling touring.
I ask becuase I interview a lot of bands who love playing live but hate being on the road so it’s interesting that you guys A) do it a lot and B) enjoy it.
Yeah but I think that our band really suits that environment of playing lots of shows. We don’t use a set-list, we do play similar sets every night but we don’t use a set-list so we can kind of change what we do every night to try and keep it interesting for ourselves.
Tell us how the latest European tour went.
It was the best tour I’ve ever done hand’s down. Everybody in New Zealand always comes back and says they’ve had the best tour ever but this actually was. When we last toured Europe Form had just been released and then the band broke up and did all that shit so we hadn’t capitalized on the hard work we’d done on Form and stuff.
In france and Germany we had really big crowds and everyone was singing along at every single show. It was different too because in New Zealand everyone asks for our early stuff but there they hadn’t heard it. Also Harmony had been out for a couple of weeks as well and it’s so interesting seeing what songs people want in different places. They were asking for totally different songs off of Harmony than people in New Zealand would.
It was really cool and really humbling really.
We went to France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Holland, Belgium and the UK.
You mentioned before it’s interesting seeing what songs people in different geographical locations like. Is there a particular place you enjoy playing the most or a particular place where you get the best response?
Well France has always been really good, and New Zealand! I love playing everywhere! The only place I don’t really like playing is … I probably shouldn’t say that. I like playing everywhere. I don’t like playing country towns in Australia I’ll say that – I don’t like playing Toowoomba and I don’t like playing the mid West in the States.
So you went to Europe this time around? Why Europe over the States?
Our album got released there.
You’ve toured the States a bit as well: is there one that you prefer or one that Die! Die! Die! does better in?
Definitely Europe for sure, it’s crazy. It was really weird and really fun. Yeah the album had just been released and I think we got heaps of people who are really getting into our band.
You said that this tour was the best you’ve ever done with the biggest crowds: does it feel like things are starting to take off with Die! Die! Die!?
I just think it’s the same as in New Zealand or Australia in the sense that we’ve finally been able to release our albums properly there and so people are really starting to get into the band. I’m not saying there’s 20, 000 people there or even 1,000 people there but we can go and play Leon in France and have exactly the same amount of people as if we played in say Dunedin or Wellington or something.
When I say it’s gone really well I mean that for years we’d go over there and we’d build it up to the same level we are at in New Zealand and then we’d go back again and play to like 20 people.
UnderTheRadar didn’t catch up with you guys when you released Harmony. Tell us how you see Harmony compared to your other work?
It was just a completely different situation because we recorded the album as a band in the middle of a tour. I guess that’s not true because we did that with Promises Promises and the first album – they were in the middle of tours. But this one we came back and it was completely disjointed – in a really embryonic state – and then the band broke up because we were supposed to go back and tour Europe straight away.
I worked on it myself with people like Thomas Healy from Paquin and Shayne Carter and also my friend Chris and did lots of guitars. I worked really hard on it on my own and that was kind of cool. Then Mikey and I went over to Tasmania and worked with Chris who recorded it so it was a completely different record to what we recorded in France and I’m really proud of it.
It’s really cool too because it’s such a personal record in that I worked really hard on it. All the other records I’ve felt really insecure about in some way or another but with that one I don’t give a shit because I’m really happy with it. It’s not perfect – no record is – but I’m really proud of the work everybody did to make it happen.
It’s really funny too because lots of people said “I like this” or “I don’t like that” and my response would be: well, you either have an album or you don’t and I’d much rather have an album so it’s quite a nice feeling in that regard.
It must also be nice to come out of a tumultuous situation (break-up etc.) and have such a strong album, yeah?
Yeah it was. I played it to lots of people and it was quite an eye-opening experience because lots of people would have negative things to say. I was sure it was fucken good and then we release it and it’s done exactly what all our other albums have done: it’s gotten really good reviews.
So where to from here for Die! Die! Die?
We’re going to do some shows in December and then our album Harmony is getting released in the UK in February so we’re probably going to go back therein March and play a few shows to release the album in the UK. Then we’ll be doing another European tour to promote Harmony in Europe end of April into May. Then we’ve got lots more festivals in Europe over their summer.
Then we’re going to record an EP in the summertime here with Rory Atwell who played bass at the start of this tour. He’s recording our new EP this summer with him. And then we’re going to try and do a new album I guess, but we’ll definitely do an EP first because I really want to do an EP over an album next.
