“Well I might die one day / And it might feel bad / Well I might die one day / And it might be sad.” Might being the key word here. The opening lines on DJ ANDREW’S new record Die One Day are the window into its thesis. Everything is a matter of perspective, a unity of opposites.
Playful but unassuming contradictions give Die One Day its distinct sound. It’s raw at its core – acoustic guitar strummed passionately, recorded hot. DJ ANDREW’s vocals reach for all registers, extreme highs and lows, without care for polite technique, only honest expression. Every now and then something shines through: on the opening, self titled track it's a flurry of choired voices, violins and flute. A constant interplay between maximum lo-finess and swirling, totally consuming maximalness.
This sonic viewpoint is also reflected thematically on Die One Day. A song about DJ ANDREW’s uncle fighting cancer (justifiably titled ‘Uncool Cancer’) sits alongside a highly theatrical song about catching glandular fever from a date. Both songs are delivered with similar emotional seriousness, the latter with even more theatricality than the former: spoken word intro, multiple crowd applauses, and a highly dramatic ranchera guitar-esque outro. Humour on Die One Day is often played straight – and why not, because life is never totally serious or funny, but usually both at the same time. So when DJ ANDREW twists his voice into something like a parody of Leonard Cohen or Rivers Cuomo, it's done both with cheekiness, but also full commitment to the bit.
Die One Day contains all sorts of fun surprises that you’d hope for from an artist who styles himself as a DJ but primarily plays acoustic guitar. Its cover art is similarly knowing – Waverley Cemetery, itself approaching meme status in its preponderance as a favourite aesthetic choice for emerging Sydney artist photoshoots. But, like – that place is just objectively beautiful anyway, so who cares? It’s not irony that DJ ANDREW is concerned with – humour, yes, but genuineness too.
Words by Lindsay Riley