CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS 152: DUNE RATS ON REWRITING THE PAST AND KEEPING THE CHAOS ALIVE
Interview by Brooke Gibbs
A decade into their career, Dune Rats aren’t slowing down - they’re just getting louder, looser, and somehow even more self-aware. Their latest release is less a straight-ahead album and more a full-circle moment: a reimagined collection of early EP cuts and fan favourites, rebuilt with the punch they always deserved. What started as a nostalgic nod for longtime listeners has unexpectedly opened the door to a whole new wave of fans, proving that chaos, when done right, doesn’t age - it evolves.
We caught up with Danny to talk about revisiting the band’s scrappy beginnings, the strange experience of old songs finding new life, and why now felt like the perfect time to look backwards before charging ahead again. From sweaty, small-room shows to stories that probably shouldn’t have made it this far, it’s clear Dune Rats are still doing things exactly their way - just with slightly better recording gear this time around.
FMM: Your new album’s been out for a couple of weeks now. Congrats! What’s the reaction been like? How are people feeling about it?
Danny: It’s been weirdly positive. With the album itself, a bunch of our old EPs were redone, and we rerecorded some of the singles that we recorded as dodgy back in the day. We would record dodgy songs where we wouldn’t be in the studio - we’d just be in a rehearsal room and just dodge record them. So, we rerecorded a couple of our favourite ones that we thought we would be sick 0f - the drums slapped real hard or there were big drops when the chorus hit. We rerecorded Ratbags! and On Our Own! We dropped a new song in aswell, with Sharks. It was really just us think it’s a cool piece of vinyl for Dunies frothies to have. It’s actually gotten a fresh fanbase, which is really weird to us. Ratbags! itself just got added to triple j, and the song came out like 10 or 12 years ago. So, for it to be added now on a radio station is really bizarre.
FMM: Why is now a good time to do these re-recordings and backwards instead of pushing forward?
Danny: I guess because we have a bunch of fresh stuff we’re gonna drop probably next year as a piece. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a mixtape album. This year, we’re touring a bunch in Europe and it was around the 10-year mark of the last EP. We’d always floated the ideas of putting the EPs on a vinyl because it had never really seen any love in that regard. We wanted to play some of those really old songs, too. We would it would be sick for the fans who have been around for ages, because I honestly don’t know when we’ll do it again, or if we’ll ever do it again.
It kind of feels like the right time to do it because after new music comes out, we don’t know where we’ll be at and whether we want to do it. We felt like now was a really cool time to go back and play some smaller venues we used to love like Oxford Art Factor, and The Crowbar in Brizzy. It’s an epic venue. We just thought it would be really fun to start off the year with that.
FMM: Do you ever miss the chaos of those early days? Or do you look back and think, thank fuck we survived that?
Danny: I think this may light that fire again. Those sort of venues kind of bring that out. They’re all real hot, smaller venues that get pretty sweaty. All our mates are going to be there - no doubt, drinking all our beers backstage. It’ll definitely feel a lot like those older shows, but it’s good to survive it. I definitely look back at some of the footage and think, oh man, we were very unhealthy. We’ve definitely had a few good feeds since then. I think this is definitely going to land somewhere between high-range and unconsciousness.
FMM: Dune Rats have made a career out of being chaotic. As you have grown as a band, has there been pressure to clean it up?
Dune Rats: I'd say the only pressure comes from us just not wanting to do the same thing. One of our biggest songs is Scott Green, and I remember after that came out, we were writing the next album and it felt like you have a bit of a choice. You can just go down that wormhole and write every song about getting fucked up on drugs and all that, but early on, a lot of our songs weren’t like that. Some of our newer stuff still has some pretty, entertainingly hectic content in it, but we do like to write about other stuff. We just find it we are in the studio and if it’s something that is so similar to something else, we don’t get bored of it.
FMM: It translates well live. Have there been any unhinged moments from a show that live rent-free in your head?
Danny: The one that always comes to mind is that kid in LAW that jumped over the mezzanine during a show. Thankfully, all he did was break his nose. I just remember it was on the news and my mum called me the next day and asked if it was our show because she was watching the news. That was hectic. And, back in the day, we were touring these EPs and we were playing on the Sunny Coast, BC got up from the drum kit mid-song and climbed the wall up onto the roof and jumped off the roof into the pool. We got booted out the venue before we finished the set, so that lives pretty solidly in my memory. I was in the middle of singing a song. You think they would just wait until the end of the set and then boot you out, not come on stage while you’re playing to people. But having said that, if any bands out there want to finish their set, it’s not the smartest thing to jump off the roof of the venue you’re playing.
FMM: You guys have toured globally. What’s it like playing to Aussies compared to overseas fans?
Danny: I think Aussies are the best and worst people to play in front of. I don’t want to throw BC under the bus, but one of the worst things that ever happened overseas was when BC went through a stage where he used to vomit heaps on stage while we play because I think he’d have too many bears. He says it was acid reflux, but I think he’d have too many bears. He just thought it was funny to spew in a cup and then throw it at you while you’re playing. Then, someone else starts spewing because vomit would hit you in the head, and then people in the front row start gagging, because of course you would, because there’s vomit. I think we’re probably the shittiest people out of it all.
FMM: This new album feels like looking back without losing who you are. How do you balance that career growth without losing that raw Dune Rats energy everyone loves.
Danny: Good question. I guess fundamentally with us fellas… like I’ve spoken to BC today, probably too many times - like eight times. We still speak every day, a million times on the phone. We’d drink and hang out with each other every day if we could. We obviously live apart now in cities, but we call each other when we think of something or a song idea turns up. It’s awesome. We’ve always had an older brother, middle brother, little brother mentality. BC is the little one, Brett’s the middle one, and I’m the older one. It keeps everything still like it has been for over a decade.
FMM: If Dune Rats in 2014 met Dune Rats now, do you think they’ll get along or do you think they’d start a fight?
Danny: I think the younger versions would try to see how many bongs we could smoke right now, and they would smoke us. They would just absolutely flog us. I’d be spewing up, passed out on the couch. I think we would out drink them, but they would out smoke us. So, it depends.
FMM: What’s the most on-brand Dune Rats purchase you’ve ever made from money you’ve made from your music?
Danny: Probably a 20-chop of weed.
FMM: Describe Old Mates as a night out - where does it start? Where does it end? Who’s getting kicked out?
Danny: We’ll probably start with Ratbags! because it’s about going out and getting up, so it starts there in the middle. Then, it probably ends with On Our Own! because you probably just end up by yourself spewing in some back alleyway.