FROM the first chords of Timeless — the opener that’s become a staple of the Hills End 10th Anniversary run — there was a sense of collective memory being stirred in real time. Tracks from Hills End were front and centre, with Lay Down, Delete and Too Soon forming a familiar arc through the night that felt both nostalgic and immediate.
A band we’ve loved from the very start, DMA’s hold a special place in the heart of Scottish music fans. From TTV first stumbling across them in a tiny Camden venue in the twenty tens to inviting them up to record one of the most iconic sessions in our archive, DMAs have had it from the very start.
As the set unfolded, that mixture of jangling indie rock and wide-open choruses kept a thread running through the room. In the Moment, Step Up the Morphine and So We Know filled the space, with each riff and refracted lyric tracing its own line through Glasgow air. It was a setlist that leaned into the band’s history, threading Melbourne and Straight Dimensionsinto the sequence before the driving pulse of Blown Away and The Switch pushed the night forward.
There was a familiar architecture to the performance: exit after the main body of Play It Out, then return for encore staples that span their catalogue. Songs like For Now, Olympia and Silver brought a sustained run of hooks and rhythms that reached both back into their catalogue and forward into the present tour narrative. Tracks such as Tape Deck Sick, Hello Girlfriend and Feels Like 37 closed the night with their characteristic blend of grit and melody.
Against the backdrop of Glasgow’s indie sensibilities, the setlist unfolded not just as a greatest-hits celebration but as a lived soundtrack for the room — familiar, unvarnished and tenacious. In a city that knows its own musical history well, the band found a receptive space for these songs to resonate once more.
