Don Broco: Amazing Things To Come

“Well, I think if we count it now, it’s like over two years since we’ve played a show which is like mad. It would’ve been October two years ago, our US/Canada headline tour. And it’s just so weird, not like playing shows anymore. It’s just really…yeah, not great.” Sitting across a Zoom call with Rob Damiani, the talismanic frontman of UK rock heavyweights DON BROCO, we witness a rare moment of apparent sadness from the usually all-smiles figurehead of one of the most beloved British bands of the last decade or so.

Having continued to reach new heights with their previous album, 2018’s number 5 charting Technology, things were looking, well, amazing for the Bedford quartet, with ever increasing popularity and sell-out shows filling their collective existence, and work underway on their next record, until much like the rest of the world, they found themselves forcibly ground to a halt at the start of 2020. Undeterred though, the band soldiered on as best they could, continuing songwriting remotely, before eventually coming out with a completed album, the soon-to-be-released Amazing Things. “That’s the kind of main positive that me and the guys are holding on to and we are just super grateful that we’ll probably never get a chance like this again, where you’ve actually got time to really just throw yourself into writing and not stress about writing too much, you know?” Rob explains. “Just because you’ve got more time to actually think about a record and not worry about, like, ‘are we going to have this song ready for this particular tour?’, which is always the way it ends up and you always end up rushing it? So it’s nice not to do it that way this time.”

Where Amazing Things sets itself apart from previous DON BROCO records is in its newfound more direct approach in tackling societal issues head-on – particularly with Uber, which was inspired by the band’s experiences with a particularly questionable-view-holding cab driver whilst on tour. “I think there’s always been serious moments on our other records, there’s always been songs that sometimes deal with things but maybe not in a super obvious way. And there’s definitely songs on this record again, that like, you might need to listen to a few times to figure out that what they’re actually talking about. Uber is one of the more blatant ones I think, because the nature of the lyrics are kind of quite direct,” posits Rob.

“And you know, there’s, there’s not too much messing about really, with like, metaphor and simile – it’s very much like here’s a snapshot in something that we went through that made us super angry. I think like, overall, the record, may be less ‘serious’, but more angry about things. It feels like the world is a completely different place to where we left it two years ago when we were touring, and everything just felt so much more carefree. And, you know, I think there was a naivety to a lot of things, me personally, I maybe looked at politics and looked at people. I’ve always tried to see the best in people and give people the benefit of the doubt. And I think this was just a year that compounded a lot of feelings where I was just angry at people, angry at myself, angry at all these huge world crisis situations we were in. A lot of uncertainty, and I guess, anxiety that comes with that. And I think there was no way that wasn’t going to come out in the lyrics without wanting it to feel like a lockdown record, which, you know, it is a lockdown record. But I didn’t want it to feel like that. But at the same time, you know, I can’t stop – that’s what I write about. I just write about whatever is on my mind. So it kind of came out that angry, serious way. I mean, at least there aren’t any lockdown songs about, you know, ‘I’m sitting at home making banana bread’, kind of thing! Like, that could have been one way we went, but we didn’t.”

The onset of lockdowns across the UK of course threw a major spanner in the works for the members of DON BROCO, coming just as they’d started to record the beginnings of what became Amazing Things. “I guess it was definitely like a teething process of like, ‘okay, how do we go about this?’, because we’d already started writing the record. The lockdown happened while we were in the studio, we’d plan to go in just for a week to record Endorphins at the time. And, like, we didn’t cut it early, but we sent Dan Lancaster, who we worked on the song with, home early because he was coughing a lot. It was just at the start of that where people didn’t really know what it was, but it was like, ‘okay, this might be serious, you should probably go home’. And then I think we stayed maybe a day, two days later. And the day we got back, it was like, shit hit the fan, you know, ‘do not go out, do not leave your house unless you really need to’. And obviously, it just carried on getting more and more intense from them, it kind of dawned on us like, well, we’re going to have to change all our plans. And we’ve now got more time to write the record, which is positive, but also we can’t meet up to do that. So it’s strictly going to be over the internet now, and obviously, it takes quite a different headspace to get into. It’s not as smooth, it’s not always as satisfying because you’re not bouncing off ideas as much. Which is definitely part of the magic of writing songs for us.”

Another very important aspect in DON BROCO’s existence that continues to grow in scope alongside them is their music videos. Where Technology’s album cycle saw the band put out videos featuring a now somewhat iconic dancing cowboy, and one in which Rob skins one of his bandmate’s faces and wears it to their own wedding, this time around they went even bigger, with a variety of clips showing their ever-growing creativity (and in the case of Gumshield, fooling their fanbase into thinking Damiani was going to have a real-life boxing match with professional boxer Dave ‘White Rhino’ Allen thanks to a weeks-long social media build-up). “I mean, I’ve got to say – I love music videos. You know, I grew up watching MTV, Kerrang!, Scuzz, like all these sick music TV channels. I could just stick them on and just watch them forever, like I’d be happy to do that,” Rob explains. “And I think a lot of bands now don’t care as much about music videos, because it’s not as big a medium as it once was. So many more people are, I guess, just listening on Spotify, you won’t hear about a band through music videos as much, it’s not as important a promo tool as it was. But for me, it really helped me understand kind of a different side to the band, it kind of paints a fuller picture or helps kind of create a picture that the music and the artwork and the videos and all that coming together, kind of can help you understand an artist more, or can elevate a song to something even better than it was, so we always put a lot of effort in. I guess going into to this record, we wanted to take that risk and do what we want. We don’t want to ever be defined by ‘okay, you have to make this’. You don’t have to make a crazy music video every time. Like it’s not a rule. But if you have a good idea, or if I have a good idea that I think is good, and it’s original, and I think no one’s seen it before, I just feel compelled to make it, you know? It just seems a real shame if those ideas just stay as ideas. You can take a risk, and it won’t always pan out. But if you can do something weird and wonderful and it entertains people, then it’s a winner.”

Our time with Rob sadly drawing to an end by this point, we ask him in closing if he has any words for fans of DON BROCO who might be anticipating Amazing Things and looking forward to the band’s looming return to the road – a request he’s all too happy to oblige. “I hope you love the record as much as we love it and I hope you can hear the fun and creativity that went into it because we really let loose on this one and pursued some pretty crazy ideas,” he emphatically notes. “And I think there’s there’s a variety within the record that kind of shows that, so I think this will be an album for everyone, I think everyone will find their favourite tracks and favourite moments on it. At the same time, I think it’s got everything that we’ve ever had in our sound as a band and more, and there’s definitely some new ideas thrown in there as well, areas of the musical landscape we’ve never touched. So that’s exciting for us. I think it’s gonna be the best album we’ve ever written for live [shows], we definitely had that in mind for the last record and I think we’ve refined that even more. I think live, it’s just gonna be crazy. The live show will be where it’s at!”

Amazing Things is out now via SharpTone Records.

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