The injury would prove an enormous setback for a band as enthusiastic as ever to make a splash overseas, with Dananananaykroyd’s remaining Australian dates ultimately cancelled. Reflecting upon the incident, Gunn confesses to more than a fleeting concern in reviewing the band’s future. “There was a part in the back of my head thinking that’d be it really… that we’d go home and that’d be it,” he reveals of his thoughts following the fateful night in Sydney.
Following Baillie’s emergency surgery – a procedure that would require permanent metal plates and pins thrown in for good measure – the band would look to reboot. Compensating for the arm in question, Dananananaykroyd would embark on a key change in formation, pitting Gunn and Baillie together at the front of stage. In a way, the entire scenario proved quite fortuitous. “It’s been a lot of fun and we push each other physically and vocally as well, we try to put each other off a lot of the time,” Gunn reveals of the shared frontline. “[The injury] just kind of forced us to do what we were inevitably going to do earlier… so it worked out pretty well!”
Dananananaykroyd owe this, the latest chapter in their fledgling career, to an infamous work ethic defined by equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. Melbourne will finally see their share of the action this August, the band poised to touch down for a Splendour In The Grass sideshow. As Gunn reveals, they have plenty of tricks up their sleeve. “There’s a lot of sound. A lot of jumping around. We’re loud and noisy but we’re also very nice!” he laughs. “I’m the youngest one in the band so I’ve still got a bit of sprightliness. The shows are just so much fun for us and we totally live for playing live and having all that energy and fun. The exhaustion definitely kicks in about two hours after a show, when we get back to the hotel and just lie down and pass out completely, but the next day we’re just ready to do it all again.”
Recently Dananananaykroyd released their sophomore album There Is A Way, the record reflecting the sheer enthusiasm of the band’s live performance. According to Gunn, the band were in pursuit of this very dimension, hoping to attain a crucial snapshot of the band at its finest. “We’ve always had trouble in the past capturing how frantic our live shows are and really wanted to manage to do it this time,” Gunn declares. “We worked really hard in getting the songs tight and making sure we could all play them perfectly with energy. We really wanted to convey that whole feeling of being punched in the face by sound… but in a good way!”
In recording There Is A Way, Dananananaykroyd would team up with multi-platinum producer Ross Robinson. Naturally,Gunn would savour every moment. “We were lucky enough to record with Robinson in Los Angeles, which was mind-blowing,” Gunn gushes. “He’s made all the best albums, so it was a bit of a dream come true and totally amazing. He really brought out the energy in us and the way he does things is so kind of special, I guess. He’s so enthusiastic, himself, about it. He wanted to push himself, so he wanted to push us and we were feeding off each other. That really reflected itself on the record: that kind of joy of doing what we’re doing, getting it done.”
Meanwhile, the band were also pushed to the limit in bringing There Is A Way into fruition. In fact, Gunn in particular became well-acquainted with his breaking point. “There was one song which nearly drove me to tears at one point! It sounds quite pretentious to say, but in fact there’s a lot more involved – like the emotions in the song and what it’s trying to convey,” he explains. “Some of them were ridiculously hard whereas some of them were a bit more of a walk in the park. It was a crazy time! It was nice to get out to Los Angeles and be ridiculous, I guess.”
In discussing the differences between There Is A Way and the band’s 2009 debut Hey Everyone!, Gunn boasts a wealth of insight. “With our second album, we wrote a whole bunch of songs in a much shorter space of time… which worked out really well, because it’s a more cohesive body of work, I guess, than the first record,” he explains. “We didn’t feel rushed at all. We had time to sort out who we were recording the album with, we had a wee-bit extra time to polish the songs off. We wanted to make something different from the first one and one that had more of a pop element to it. Not a traditional pop obviously, but more poppy for us.”
Meanwhile, Dananananaykroyd suffered numerous setbacks in embarking upon There Is A Way. Gunn professes a tight-lipped disposition concerning the rocky road to its recording, offering only fleeting insights into the difficulties the band endured. “It had been a year before we recorded the album – trying to record the album. We spent time trying to sort everything out and it was stalling, we were getting communication breakdowns everywhere and getting bummed out with the whole thing. We were sitting at home thinking, ‘We’ll definitely record the album next month!’.Then it would come to next month, and we’d say ‘Well the next month then!’ So we had this whole feeling of ‘Is this going to happen?’ in the end.”
“We were in a dark place for a while as a band and it wasn’t working out, so once we finally got [to LA] and got everything working, it felt like a huge weight off our shoulders,” Gunn reveals. “There Is A Way seemed to describe how we felt: that there is a way to push through things and get to the end. You can do what you want if you just push through the shit, I guess. It was pretty dark before, but now we’re just so glad to have it done and that nothing too bad happened I guess. There Is A Way seems to sum it up in a cool way, without giving too much away.”
Meanwhile, in the present day, Dananananaykroyd have found their way to their second Australian tour and they couldn’t be more excited. “We had a lot of fun at Splendour two years ago, so we’re really looking forward to that. We played a song and a half in Sydney last time and that was pretty good.”
