Django Django have never been easy to categorise. Since 2012, when their eponymous debut album was released – spawningn quirky, genre-defying tracks such as Default, Waveforms, Love’s Dart and Wor – the London-based band have confounded expectations at every turn. Their fourth, Glowing in the Dark, takes a similar approach. Is it a dance record? Electronica? One for indie dancefloors? Is that an art-rock song? And what business does that two-minute acoustic number have in there?
Frontman and Derry native Vincent Neff is in the band's north London studio, taking shelter from a city that he describes as "quite apocalyptic-feeling" at the
moment. "Nothing is open, everybody's looking pretty miserable, it's slightly weird and empty. It's a London that I've never seen before, really."
In a way, the off-kilter vibe of life right now is an apt backdrop to the four-piece’s latest creation. In many other ways, these songs act as an antidote to the endless lockdowns, non-stop cycles of despondency and the constant gloomy news headlines on rotation; the clue, Neff says, is in the title. But this is not Django Django’s “Covid album”; these songs were written mostly in 2019, when other themes of disillusionment and frustration abounded across the globe.
“We kind of had it all done and were mixing and mastering when the first lockdown happened,” he explains. “It was kind of all in the bag by then, so it’s been around for a while for us. We got it wrapped up before Covid came along, so I suppose it’s more about where we were in 2019 – in the throes of Brexit, Trump on the throne and all that kind of stuff.”
It may not be the most enticing lead-in to an album, but the lyrical themes on Glowing in the Dark relate to an urge to escape, and to a sense of empowerment in the face of despondency.
“I suppose it’s that feeling of when you’re up against it – every time you turned on the news it just made you want to go into the foetal position,” he laughs. “I suppose we’re quite left-wing and obviously I’m from Derry and I’ve got everything that comes with that as well – so I suppose it seemed like a crazy year. I know that things have changed now that Trump’s gone, and even Brexit is resolved, even though we’re not happy with it – but you’re trying to move on.
“So there was a lot of that expression; songs like Gravity and Glowing in the Dark, that idea of just being off the planet and trying to imagine yourself somewhere else, because the situation was so crap. We never want to ram it down people’s throats, but I always like when it’s done subtly. Right the Wrongs and Got Me Worried and Hold Fast are about trying to hold on when the world seems to be crumbling a bit around you.”
Other tracks, such as Headrush and Night of the Buffalo, “were kind of looking at some of the messed-up directions that a lot of the western governments take”. Neff was inspired to write the latter after watching the news reports about Trump’s oil and gas land rush through Native American reservations.
“We were just like ‘Jesus, have they not been through enough?’– 250 or 300 years of this crap,” he sighs. “Then I was looking at that link between Native American tribes who sent money to Ireland during the Famine... that came about even when we had the song done, it was like a weird last chapter. I thought that was an amazing story; two peoples being displaced simultaneously, but trying to bind them together in some ways. There was a lot of stories like that that crept in.”
The singer and guitarist says the band learned a lot during the making of their last album, 2018’s Marble Skies, and applied some of those new processes this time around. That meant tightening up their songwriting process to make things more concise for Glowing in the Dark.
“We were just keen to make the storytelling and the themes more certain, more defined,” he says. “Sometimes in the past, it’s been slightly fuzzy about what the songs are potentially about. We got into this habit of turning around to whoever came in with a song or a bunch of lyrics of asking what’s it about? And you’d have to deliver what it’s about in a single line so that people could understand it. And if we didn’t know, or couldn’t sum it up in a line or two, we thought ‘well, how the hell is anybody else meant to know?’
“You can talk about songs or themes in an abstract way, of course – but we got a bit more diligent about being definite.”
Glowing in the Dark also finds Django Django playing around with new sonic experiments in a bid to catch listeners off guard; Neff references albums like Screamadelica and bands such as The KLF and OutKast’s penchant for inserting interludes and skits into the tracklist as influential. There are certainly some unexpected moments on the album – not least the dreamy acoustic flutter of the sub-two-minute The World Will Turn, or Charlotte Gainsbourg’s guest turn on the chic, art-pop strut of Waking Up.
“We’re getting better at editing, we’re moving away from the seven-minute efforts we had on the second album, and trying to get back into short, snappy little tracks,” he laughs. “With Waking Up, we’d hammered the track out, got the melodies and all the different parts. Then I sat down and had this kind of Wild at Heart roadtrip image in my head that kind of seemed to suit the track.
“We’re all big fans of [Gainsbourg] and her singing style, and we’re on the same label [Because Music]. So we were at a meeting with the label boss, and we were like, ‘You couldn’t do us a favour, could you?!’ So he got it over to her and made it happen. I went over to Paris just after Christmas 2019 and went into the studio with her to do the vocals. It was amazing – I’m still shocked that it came off. She definitely brought another facet to the song.”
Both that song and the album in its entirety is testament to Django Django’s willingness to evolve with every record; although some trademarks linger, it’s hard to pair the band who made Glowing in the Dark with the one that created their 2012 debut.
“It does sound like a different band. I think I even sound much more Derry on our first album, for some reason,” Neff agrees, laughing. “It’s like a different time; it’s almost like it’s not us. Even the way we made it, thinking back to a song like Default – sitting at the end of Dave’s bed, recording that guitar line into the back of his computer, not even into a soundcard... that’s how crap the set-up we had was. It’s weird to hear how low-tech it was, and how naive we were when we were doing it. But that’s the joy of what it was, too: we didn’t know about song structure, we didn’t know how to record stuff that well.
“I suppose that’s always an exciting point for any artist or painter, when they’re at that point of naivety – you can get really exciting results. But it was a fun time. It’s good to think back on it.”
Still clearly a band with plenty left to say and to offer, Django Django will continue to take each album as it comes, says Neff; they already have plenty of songs and ideas in the works for the next two, and one of them may be inspired by Dave Maclean’s guise as house music producer Hugo Paris.
"I suppose this record is a slight mash-up of different styles that we've done before, in some ways – and I think it's difficult for us to move away from that, because we really do like a lot of different genres of music and we find it difficult to stick to one thing. But I think making something like a pure electronic album – and it doesn't necessarily have to be dance-based; even ambient stuff – but keeping it to a certain palette of sounds would be a good challenge for us.
"So you never know – there could be a Hugo Paris and three-quarters of Django collaboration at some point."
Given the year they've had – and the fact that most of their songwriting these days is done via WeTransfer, with keyboardist Tommy Grace in Glasgow – the sense of resilience on Glowing in the Dark should see them through 2021. After all, if a band can survive a pandemic and Brexit, surely they can survive anything.
Neff laughs loudly. "I hope you're right. I really hope you're right."
Glowing in the Dark is released on February 12th on Because Music
