Self-dubbed “council-punk” four-piece The Dunts came charging out of Glasgow last year on a burst of punchy punk, frantic guitars, and pummeled vocals with singles
‘Coalition Of Chaos’ and the
Johnny Madden (of Baby Strange) and Chris Marshall-produced 'Dimitri', which featured on Little Indie's Roundtable. Both tracks came from their EP, ‘Not Working Is Class’, released in November. Latest single, ‘Birds and the Beez’, was released on April 27.
Who are you?
I’m Robert Smith - Rab - the frontman and guitarist with The Dunts. Then we’ve got Colin McGachy, lead guitarist and vocalist, David 'Div' McFarlane, bassist and backing vocals, and last, but not least, Kyle McGhee, resident smasher of drums.
Tell us something about yourself and how you came to be where you are today?
We are a punk band from Glasgow. The other three boys in the band met each other in school, and had jammed with each other throughout. I didn’t meet any of them until about four years ago, when I met Colin. Colin and I became really good friends and as a result I was introduced to David. I didn’t do music at school and had never picked up an instrument really, but I wanted to be in a band, so I went out and bought an electric guitar and started learning how to play it so that I could start a band with Colin and two of our pals. We were just doing covers and it was alright, but two line-up changes meant that we managed to get David and Kyle in, a point which really was the birth of The Dunts. We’ve not looked back!
Give us an idea of your musical style and influences.
We’ve got quite a unique sound, I think. We’ve been calling it “council punk”. We were all brought up in shady places in or around Glasgow, council estates where trouble, violence and poverty was never too far away. The way we’ve been brought up and the environment around us is reflected in our music, whether it’s aggressive guitar riffs that capture the feel of growing up in a shithole or lyrics, musing about some of the issues we faced growing up or scenarios we experienced.
In terms of influences, the common ground seems to be 00s stuff like Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes, with other things like Radiohead, The Beatles, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Nirvana and Aphex Twin coming in the background.
Explain the production and writing process behind your songs.
We’ll usually start with an individual member’s idea and work on all instrument parts at the same time after we’ve got the chord progression and structure the way we want it. We’ll lay down the tracks for all the instruments, and only finish when everyone is happy with everything. Me and Colin will then usually sit with the guitars and work out the vocal melodies, fitting lyrics to them and then finally we’ll just play the tunes as a full band over and over again until it’s tight enough to play live. It usually doesn’t take us long to get to that point, we usually get it nailed down quickly.
‘Birds and the Beez’ is actually the first song we ever wrote as a band, which I think is cool because there have been other tunes that we’ve written after 'Birds and the Beez' that have kind of fallen off the path and don’t get played anymore. So the fact that it’s survived to this point, has been released and is being well received, is amazing for us. It’s meant to be lyrically ambiguous in the sense that it could be perceived as the conflicting inner monologue in a panicking mind or it could be perceived as a conversation between two tired, drifting people who just aren’t speaking the same language to each other anymore. The birds are symbolic of the birds that chirp as your internal conflict rots your night away into morning, and the bees are your weapon of choice, fuelling your paranoia and worry.
Can we catch up with you at any forthcoming live shows?
Yeah, we've got a load of dates over the country coming up, with a tour at the end of May.
06/05/2018 – Glasgow – Stag & Dagger Festival
12/05/2018 – Stockton on Tees – Songs from Northern Britain
23/05/2018 – Edinburgh – Sneaky Pete’s
24/05/2018 – Manchester – Night People
25/05/2018 – Sheffield – Café Totem
26/05/2018 – Newcastle – Head Of Steam
27/05/2018 – Glasgow – Fred Paton Day Care Centre (Rascalton EP Launch)
31/08/2018 – Dumfries & Galloway – Electric Fields Festival
We've got a lot of recorded material that we've saved up, so the rest of the year will be us dripping them out and gigging around the country. We're going to be playing a lot of new cities and a few festivals, I'm sure there's plenty more coming. We're not going to be playing Glasgow too often this year, but watch out for some big shows with friends.
Where can we hear more of your music?
We're on pretty much everything you can think of. I think the best free ones are Soundcloud and Spotify and our website.
What social media platforms can we find you on?
Website // Facebook // Twitter // Instagram
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