Dance Gavin Dance is infamous for boggling our minds with off the wall lyrics, intricate artwork, and tumultuous career ups and downs. The unpredictable nature of their creative spirits led them to develop their own special niche in rock music that is often copied but never replicated.
If you've been following the band for a long time, you know that their growth has been anything but linear. Their latest album Artificial Selection encompasses the past and present of their career with songs like Evaporate, which represents metaphorically "letting go" of the past eras and embracing their current star vocalist Tilian Pearson.
"It was written to be a throwback to where we've been and what we've done musically and to fully encompass the whole territory that DGD that has spanned. In a way, it felt like at the end of the record, it was a farewell to that," said guitarist Will Swan. "At the time it did feel like a goodbye in some way but there's still no telling what is going to come next."
On the other hand, they also featured guest vocalist Kurt Travis, who is an ex singer for Dance Gavin Dance. It is a rare sight for bands to reunite with old flames but the collaboration was a cheeky nod to their past.
"Our band has done that a lot of times where people are like 'this would be crazy, they would never do this' and the we are like 'hey let's just do it just to troll everyone.' We had this song and thought 'yo this would be a perfect song for Kurt and it would be what no one expects' so we just did it. We like to do things that are just out of left field," said Swan.
Fans love to delve deep and investigate the meanings behind everything in DGD's work. From the Easter eggs in their album artwork to the stories behind song lyrics, the fans don't let anything slip past them.
"I feel like our fans create the same kind of theories as the fans of that TV show Lost where it gets so deep and so crazy that I read some of the stuff and I'm like 'oh my god well maybe this is true,'" said Swan. "We like to check some of those theories out and keep up with all of the crazy fan stories that come out. Sometimes they're on point and most of the time they're not."
The most shocking fan theory that spawned from Artificial Selection was the rumor that the band was breaking up. Due to the slightly nostalgic nature of Evaporate, listeners started to believe that the song was their final goodbye. Luckily for us, that is a false rumor and DGD is still going strong.
The mental twists and turns don't stop at their albums, their music videos add another dimension to the imaginative worlds enveloped within their music. The video for Count Bassy sparked confusion and eyebrow raises for it's jarring visuals and metaphorical nature. With the help of their filmmaking friend Mount Emult, his brainchild was born and one of the most obscure videos of their career was released.
"He always asks for some pictures of us and then we tell him 'make this as weird as you can' and we just let him have full creative reign over it," said drummer Matt Mingus.
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After hinting at their new album and the beginnings of the writing process for the next release, it is guaranteed that Dance Gavin Dance will continue throwing more curveballs and surprises in the near future. They are already planning on hitting the studio soon even though Artificial Selection still has a lot of life left in it.
You can stay up to date on all things DGD on:
https://dancegavindanceband.com
www.twitter.com/DGDtheband
https://www.facebook.com/DanceGavinDance/
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