MNZ Interview: Dave and The Dirty Humans

One of Wellington’s finest alternative rock bands is about to drop their highly anticipated first album after a run of popular singles. Dave and the Dirty Humans have been recently altering their signature desert rock sound, bringing in elements of indie and pop while utilising their three part harmonies to contrast with their raw rock sound. The four piece recently sat down with Muzic.NZ’s Nick to chat about their imminent release and their expanding sound.

I’m with David and the Filthy Hominids!

Harrison – Aye!

Hamish – That’s us!

We got Hamish and Harrison (guitar), Ben (drums) and Kane (bass). You all sing in harmony too.
I hear you guys are recording an album?

Hamish – We are, pretty much done with it. All the songs are recorded and tracked and stuff. Little bit of production stuff and then send it off for mixing and then it’ll be coming out pretty soon.

Ben – Bit of studio magic.

Harrison – A bit of fairy dust.

How many tracks?

Hamish – Nine.

Ben – Well, ten. Ten tracks, but nine songs.

Any names for production, mixing?

Ben – I just produce myself for the drumming, at Massey. Everything else at home. We’ll probably have Jake Stokes mix it and then mastering … we’ll see.

You’ve been described as desert rock inspired swagger alt-rock with elements of metal and grunge, but recently you’ve been exploring more indie rock sounds with cleaner tones, sophisticated chord voicings, sweeter vocals, using autobiographical and vulnerable subject matter. Is there a reason for the shift and can fans still expect the heavy stuff on your upcoming album?

Harrison – Yeah, so, at the start of 2025, wait, was it 2025?

Hamish – Yeah, start of last year.

Harrison – We were writing in that kind of similar style to what we’d done previously, I suppose, that desert rock kind of genre. And we’re struggling a bit to get something that would stick for a while, you know. We had new songs that we tried to debut live and it wasn’t really coming together. So, yeah, one day we were in the practice room, our shed, Hamish and I, and just trying to just do something. Hamish had a few ideas for a couple of new songs that he was working on and three songs fell out of us and it felt very natural. So, we wrote lyrics to those and structured them with the band and everybody got their parts together and then as the year went on, it just became easier and easier to write in that style. And it still sounds like Dave. I don’t think it’s too different from the singles, other than, you know, the gain level, the songwriting is still similar. We’ve just like added a different palette to it really. I think our first three singles are all very self-referential to a certain degree. Apart from Fora, it’s all stuff that we’ve had to go through and deal with or that we’re thinking about like, Rock Bottom and Sweaty Eyes. So yeah, the lyrics haven’t changed too much in the subject matter. Maybe, just like the quality of them, maybe?

Hamish – Actually, I think the lyric writing has changed quite a bit. What we’re putting down, the way we’re saying stuff is probably a little more story-like.

Ben – As the monkey who hits the drums and doesn’t write that many of the lyrics, it seems way more vulnerable. There’s a really gentle instrumentation now, where what you say is vulnerable because it’s actually audible. And so, you know, you’re actually having to hold up a lot more of the weight of the real emotional chord progressions and stuff. And yeah, I think the lyrics are much more focused on like a topic each song. You can kind of be like, this song is about this. And even just that very clear topical thing, I think it’s something fairly recent in this project which I think is dope. There’s more nuance able to happen, I think that’s the main thing.

Harrison – One thing we’ve always done as a band, I think what we got from Ben, is: surprises throughout. I think that’s going to be on the album as well. We may still have some heavy stuff up our sleeve. Just have to wait and see. Dynamics.

I’ll mention a few bands and you can give me a general yay or nay for being a fan of their music:

Geese?

Ben – Yeah, I heard of them … but I don’t know anything about them.

Hamish – Everyone’s a psyop these days, even Wunderhorse is.

Harrison – I like some of the main guy’s solo stuff. I get big industry plant vibes from them.

People used to say that about The Strokes.

Ben – The super Nepo-babies.

Hamish – There’s a lot of that, aye. I mean, I thought Wunderhorse were coming up and they weren’t an industry plant or whatever because they’d been around for so long doing other stuff. But the guitarist’s mum is like, Kim Wilde or something. Some 80’s pop star. Well, you never get anywhere doing anything without some sort of connection these days.

Ben – It’s tough like that.

Polyphia?

Ben – Yes!

Harrison – Is that that tattooed pretty boy?

Kane – I give them a yay.

Ben – They’re like techy. Like, if you wrote a pop song with, like, the most apeshit, modern guitar techniques and drums that do trap beats and stuff. That’s dope.

Fontaines D.C.?

Everybody – Yes.

Harrison – They’re great.

IDLES?

Ben – Love IDLES.

Creed?

Ben – I mean, yeah – ironically.

Hamish – In the video for One Last Breath, he’s just falling for like half the video, and then he hits the ground and just doesn’t die and gets back up.

Bloc Party.

Ben – Yeah, I love Bloc Party.

Hamish – Well, that one album…

Angine de Poitrine?

Harrison – Yes … but, I don’t know if I’d listen to the music without the video, though. Yeah, the visuals are big.

Ben – Hey, that’s what they say about us!

Tool?

Harrison – No.

Kane – Fun riffs to play, though.

Harrison – If I knew nothing about Maynard, then I probably would like them a bit more. I love Adam Jones. He’s a great guitarist.

Did you know he was impaled by a buffalo on the set of Dances With Wolves, and because the animal was protected, they had to use a tranquilizer…

Harrison – Poor boy.

Deftones?

Everybody – Yes.

My Bloody Valentine?

Ben – Yeah.

Harrison – Wait, who?

Ben – They’re kind of like, it’s the first shoegaze, well maybe not the first, but a big one.

Harrison – Oh, right, I was confused. I thought you said Bullet for My Valentine.

Pumpkins?

Harrison – Oh, Smashing Pumpkins?

Hamish – Their first two albums, yeah.

Harrison – Mellon Collie is a bit long. Bit of filler in there. But the first two albums are fucking awesome.

Kyuss?

Hamish – Yes. Some, Kyuss stuff.

Alice in Chains?

Harrison – Yes! Yes!

Hamish – I like them better now with the new singer.

Harrison – Oh, shut up.

War On Drugs?

Everybody – Yes.

A7X?

Ben – Avenged.

Hamish – Nah.

Harrison – Huh? Avenged Sevenfold? Ah, no.

Ben – No, not for me.

Placebo?

Harrison – Wish I knew more about placebo. Don’t know them that well.

Foos?

Harrison – Never heard of them.

Hamish – When I was learning how to play the guitar, for sure. Yeah, I liked them much more after the affair, I think.

Harrison – I was such a fan of Dave Grohl’s adultery, but then I listened to his music… So disappointed!

Soundgarden?

Harrison – YES!

You guys know Superheaven?

(*Ben starts singing Youngest Daughter.)

Harrison – Oh, is that them?

Hamish – I’ve heard that song, haven’t heard anything else.

Queens of the Stone Age?

Harrison – Oh, yeah, I suppose, they’re all right.

There’s a misconception about the Wellington music scene that it’s oversaturated with stoner doom metal bands playing 60bpm or Bob Marley cover acts. To me, there seems to be a 90’s revival in terms of grunge, early shoegaze and alternative rock going on. Can you guess a reason for this?

Hamish – I think it’s just more what’s cool. I think a lot of skatery vibes are coming back. People wearing baggy jeans and skater music’s kind of that shoegazy, grungy, punky stuff.

Ben – I have a theory that it’s like the people who are sort of in their 20’s now were not alive in the 90’s. So, their whole life, they’ve got to look at cool things and there’s always been references from the 90’s of cool things their entire life and it’s been recent, so they’re likely to have been exposed to it, you know, and so there’s like, this subconscious bias towards that because they’ve just grown up with that as the most recent reference of “cool” their entire life. That’s the theory I have.

Harrison – There’s also a lot of Y2K stuff, you know, definitely more in the club scene, I would say, people who are going out to clubs, they’ve got an early 2000’s kind of aesthetic about them. Not that I listened to much of that music.

Hamish – There’s a big indie scene on at the moment. I mean, Frank on Tap and Bleach played at Parrotdog the other night and that looked packed. And Cuba Dupa was massive for it. All the places that were full to the brim were for bands. It was usually some sort of indie thing, like Debt Club. That was full and Fran, that was packed all the way back.

I notice you sometimes switch lead vocalist roles – do you also switch guitar roles, lead and rhythm?

Hamish – It depends on how it’s written and how difficult something is to play while singing.

Harrison – Pretty much if Hamish is singing lead, I’ll be doing a lead part on guitar, and pretty much it’ll be me or Ben singing harmony or both of us singing harmony. And then if I’m singing lead, Hamish will be doing a lead part.

Who sings harmony to Kane?

Harrison – All of us. We’re all only here for Kane’s vocal career.

Kane – I’m just saving it for the big stuff.

Hamish – He’s waiting for his X Factor audition.

Harrison – Saving it for the My Name Is Mud cover.

Kane – I’m saving it for the Part of Me cover.

And sometimes Hamish plays drums or one part of the drum kit (referencing their song Left Shoe.)

Hamish – We might bring it back for a future tour.

Ben (sadly) – R.I.P. Left Shoe.

Kane – Yeah, I want to bring it back.

How did you guys come up with that crowd participation idea?

Ben – Bro, we just started singing about a left shoe and people started handing us their shoes one time and it just kept happening.

What do you guys tune to?

Harrison – Drop C.

Do you want to play with any other tunings on the album?

Hamish – Nah, it’s too hard.

Harrison – Yeah, we’ve tried and we’re, you know, we all work and it’s like, we’ve all got bills to pay. The last thing that we really need right now is spending money on more guitars and strings.

Hamish – We might write stuff, stuff that’s higher up in the future, but we’ll just use a capo. It all just depends on where the vocals are sitting, what’s going to feel best for that. And, yeah, I think it’s all fit pretty well with the tuning we’re in, so we haven’t really mucked around with it.

After recording drums professionally, would you rather have complete control of your recordings in basements and closets with mattresses over an extended time, or, if you got to choose the producer, working in a studio giving them complete control but for a shorter amount of time?

Ben – Well, for us, we knocked the drums out in two days at Massey. I think I would probably be a do-it-myself tech. Because I know how to do it. We used 16 mics or 17 mics, I think, to capture the kit on this album.

Hamish – I think what would be preferred would probably be still doing it the way that we’ve done it, but having maybe two weeks off of work completely, where we could all be there and at the same time and do it then. Because what’s been really tricky about this process is finding a time that everyone’s free or the person who needs to record the part is free. Kane and I live together now, but we weren’t before. And it would be like, “hey, Kane, come over after work or whatever, and we’ll do this one song on bass”, and then it’s all been chunks like that. Whereas, if you had a solid block of time, it’d be way easier.

Harrison – Someone pay for some studio time for us!

Hamish – If it was somebody professional and they had an opinion and an idea of how they wanted to record it, then…

Harrison – Rick Beato, man!

Ben – I love Beato, he’s hilarious.

Hamish – I mean, from a guitar standpoint, I don’t think we’ve been married to any particular way of doing it. It’s just what we have available to us. That’s how we’ve done it.

As a band, how do you make your music more complex? Timing? Note choice or key signature change? Or by structure?

Harrison – All of the above!

Ben – I mean, yeah, they’re all tools. I’d say structure. I mean, there’s a lot of pop form on the album, but it’ll be, you know, like, someone drop out here and someone drop out here and let’s bring the chorus in late and why don’t we all smack in on beat two here? You know, so I think structure is definitely the first port of call. And then once the song form is in and there’s a catchy vocal and stuff, then it becomes, like, okay, I can see this sharp 11 fitting real nice in the backing vocal at the end of one of these songs. You know, then you can get the flavour going, but you need the catchy core.

Hamish – I think also trying to avoid clichés has been a big one. Just going over the lyrics that we’ve already written and going, oh, there’s possibly a better way we could say that without it sounding like…

Ben – …“cross my mind”?

Harrison – Using the word ‘Just’?

Ben – Yo, that was feedback from yonks ago! As a wiggle word, as a filler syllable word, you know, like, yeah, trying to have your own turns of phrase. “Something, something my heart”. “Something, something your eyes”.

Kane – I got a Thesaurus.

Put these elements into order of importance – Staying in time, staying in tune, mix of instruments or stage presence/appearance.

Kane – Stay in tune? Down at the bottom, I reckon.

Ben – I reckon it’s stage presence or being in time. They’re kinda tight, for me.

Harrison – I reckon it’s stage presence then being in tune. Because each band has, like a kind of groove, you know, that you lock into.

But, I mean, would you rather be slightly out of time, slightly out of tune, looking awkward…

Harrison – Hey, it sounds like you’ve seen us play…

Ben – But yeah, stage presence, big. If you are engaging to the audience, you can sound like total crap. But if you’re hype and having fun and people are having fun with you, then that’s the whole point.

Hamish – It all depends on how far out of tune we’re talking…

Do you guys ever talk about what you’re going to wear on stage?

Hamish – I think it’s more about making sure we’re not completely off in the wrong direction. It’s more like pretty much, wear whatever you want to. As long as it’s not like short-shorts kind of thing.

Ben – I wear shorts, it’s true.

Hamish – Yeah, but not booty shorts.

Ben – No, I haven’t worked up the confidence yet.

Harrison – We’ve been all over the map with our outfits, like, back in the early days of the band it would be a point of pride to show up in a hilarious outfit. Kane wore a trash bag once. I’ve worn a couple of dresses. Kane’s worn ponchos.

Kane – It’s, like, I just own a poncho. You gotta wear it out. I’d love to get up as a wizard.

Harrison – Hamish has worn skirts. He wore a cheerleader’s outfit.

What subject do you guys typically keep returning to on your band messenger?

Harrison – Kane’s uncle died.

Uh. Ok.

Hamish – His uncle didn’t die.

Kane – It’s just a hoax.

Hamish – We were trying to find a way to politely decline a gig that we had already said yes to a long time ago. We won’t say what gig it was. The only thing that we could come up with rather than saying the truth was that Kane’s Uncle died.

Harrison – Kane’s got a hundred uncles.

Kane – Hey, big family.

How do you come up with song names?

Hamish – We usually figure it out after the lyrics, but all of our voice recordings will end up on our Google Drive with some silly name that Ben’s come up with.

Ben – I’m usually the audio guy who sets the phone down. It’s a very difficult job, but someone’s gotta do it and I’ll just try and get some evocative title that’s memorable and weird.

Have any of them stayed for the final title?

Ben – Fora. That was just a random word I thought of. In the end, the lyrics kind of referenced it.

Hamish – That was on purpose to make it fit.

So, you guys covered Song For The Dead by Queens of the Stone Age and My Own Summer (Shove It) by Deftones. What covers would suit your recent stylistic shift?

Harrison – Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World. But, everybody’s playing that song now, though. Harry Styles did it recently.

Hamish – My House by Kids of 88. Maybe Eternal Life by Jeff Buckley. Dream Brother is a real cool one.

What year and what city would you guys like to time travel to and play a gig?

Ben – 2026, right here.

Hamish – Jerusalem, 0 BC.

Harrison – The 80’s?

Kane – Yeah, the late 80’s.

Harrison – You know, like before grunge popped off. Because there’s lots of good bands from that time. Like, you know the Cure. I don’t like the Smiths, but, like, REM, they’re really cool.

Ben – Should we go to the year 3000? Come on now, the earth is a barren rock here.

What’s your dream band to open for?

Ben – Enter Shikari.

Harrison – There was a gig at Anderson Park in Wellington. Like, I think it was a couple of years ago, which was the War on Drugs and Spoon. I reckon if we could hop on that bill. Although, maybe there would be a kind of oversaturation of the indie rock vibe.

What about a New Zealand band?

Hamish – I like Debt Club. They’re pretty cool.

Ben – We know the bro from that.

Imagine you have an opportunity to open for your dream international band, but one member gets covid and they can’t perform. Fortunately, you have the magical power to summon a musician, living or dead, who can magically learn all the sick members parts and play the gig.

Harrison – Dav…

And you can’t pick Dave Grohl. Who would replace Kane on bass?

Harrison – Prince?

Hamish – The current bassist for Queens of the Stone Age also does some like poppy stuff.

Ben – maybe we should pick who should replace ourselves. Well, who you going to pick, man? Les Claypool?

Harrison – God, that would be a horrible show.

Hamish – And what if I chuck in Matty Healy?

Harrison – I would want George Harrison to replace me.

Ben – Who should I pick?

Harrison – Lars Ulrich!

Hamish – This is the worst gig in New Zealand!

I would’ve got Justin Chancellor (Tool’s bassist) for Kane, Abe Cunningham (Deftones’ drummer) for Ben, Josh Homme (Queens of The Stone Age singer/guitarist) for Harrison and Jake Clarke (Superheaven singer/guitarist) for Hamish.

According to your streams data, apart from NZ, where else are you popular?

Harrison – USA, apparently.

Kane – I saw one listener in Johannesburg once.

Hamish – OK, top countries: New Zealand, United States, Australia, Canada and … Malawi.

My last question is what instrument could you add to your music which would totally fit your existing aesthetic?

Harrison – Synths!

Ben – No, more drums!

Harrison – Steel pans!

Ben – Drunken wailing!