Death From Above 1979 - Trainwreck 1979

They said it'd never happen, then it did. Stream the first single from DFA1979's second album, 'The Physical World'.

For music fans of a certain generation, it's pretty much a given that news of a brand new Death From Above 1979 song is very, very exciting. But if you're not from a certain generation – if you're an 18 year old Dummy reader, for example – you'd have only been eight years old when DFA1979 released their first (and, until now, only) album, the brash and vulgar 'You're A Woman, I'm A Machine'. And you might be wondering what all the fuss is about.

So, for the unfamiliar: DFA1979 were a duo who made raw, angry, sexually-charged dance punk music; a hardcore band with ties to an emerging electro/club music scene. 'You're A Woman, I'm A Machine' was a classic of its era, but the band split up not long after its release. Grainger worked as a solo songwriter, and Keeler went on to be one half of EDM-presaging electro outfit MSTRKRFT. Throughout all this, Grainger and Keeler were insistent that they'd only ever reform DFA1979 for a shitload of money.

Naturally, they ended up reforming.

In 2011, they started playing their first gigs together, and eventually ended up road-testing new material they'd written at their shows. This week, they spilled the beans on their new, second album, 'The Physical World'. Despite a decade-long gap, its first song, Trainwreck 1979, sounds pretty promising, keeping the heavy DFA1979 sound intact, but with a marked progression from 'You're A Woman, I'm A Machine'. That might sound an obvious description – 'the same but different' is basically the game for all bands going into their second album – but it's worth saying just because it's so rare to hear a reunion pick up where things left off so naturally. Hopefully the rest of the album will gel this smoothly.

'The Physical World' tracklist:

01. Cheap Talk
02. Right On, Frankenstein!
03. Virgins
04. Always On
05. Crystal Ball
06. White Is Red
07. Trainwreck 1979
08. Nothin’ Left
09. Government Trash
10. Gemini
11. The Physical World

Live dates:

October 20th: Electric Ballroom, London
October 21st: Gorilla, Manchester
October 22nd: The Garage, Glasgow

Last Gang/Caroline/Fiction release 'The Physical World' on September 9th 2014 (pre-order).

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