DR SURES UNUSUAL PRACTICE

Words: Keeley Thompson

Images: Ada Duffy & James Morris

The television flickers with manic energy, jumping from one channel to the next with nauseating speed. The listless onlooker watches in a daze as the screen cycles through a toxic love story masquerading as reality, a news channel broadcasting the world's disasters in vivid detail, and an animated comedy where a rat meets its untimely demise under the weight of a frying pan. 

Each program is a surreal representation of a narrative that its audience must accept, each one selling cognitive dissonance so convincingly that the onlooker is left feeling like they've unwittingly handed over their mental credit card.

Yet, amidst the chaos and disillusionment, there is a glimmer of hope. Acknowledging the bleakness of the world and the community this admission creates can serve as an anodyne for apathy. 

Enter Dr Sure's Unusual Practice, a Naarm (Melbourne) based band that blends surrealist Dadaism with subversive political statements and relatable existentialism. Their music is an intellectual and offbeat exploration of otherwise depressing subject matter, combining optimistic and cerebral lyrics with avant-garde, capricious musical elements. 

Dr Sure's Unusual Practice is an uncanny and transparent creation, one that is crafted with care and precision rather than simply unearthed.

KEELEY: Dr Sure's is on tour! How's it been treating you so far?

DOUGAL: I’m in Tasmania playing at MoNA FOMA. The change of situation is actually outrageous. We've just come here from ten days in Aotearoa (New Zealand) playing at a DIY music festival called Camp A Low Hum, where there were five of us in a four-man tent, all very cosy and smelly and soggy by the end of it (all while having the best time). I’m really at the opposite end of the spectrum this weekend, my own hotel room and a king bed. 

But yeah it's been really great. We kicked it off in Aotearoa, our first time playing over there, and spent most of our time at Camp A Low Hum, as well as shows in Wellington and Palmerston North. That festival was such an incredible experience. We all walked away saying that was potentially the best week of our lives. 

It hadn't run in about ten years, but it's an iconic DIY festival that I've heard whispers about for so long. It was awesome to be there for its return. For people that exist in these DIY spaces, it's kind of a socialist, subcultural utopia. It was really life-affirming to be in that kind of space and experience the creative commune that you've always envisioned. When you don't really get to see the full depth or potential of those communities often (or ever), you start to wonder whether they are possible and whether they could actually exist. Being there gave me a boost of endurance that they can and do. 

KEELEY: Was it serendipitous that the beginning of your tour aligned with that festival? 

DOUGAL: Yeah when the Camp A Low Hum offer came through we’d just finished booking the Aus run and it all lined up really fortuitously. We'd just announced the single (and album) and always prioritise touring around a release. From the outset with Dr Sure’s we’ve had a really strong ethos towards touring and experiencing different places.

KEELEY: I was actually supposed to see you guys play at The Bearded Lady in February 2022, but we couldn't get there due to the flooding. 

DOUGAL: Oh yeah, that show was wild. It was actually coming through the roof onto the stage. It had started as a bit of a trickle, but by the end of our set, it was a steady flow of water. The next day, we were supposed to go play the Sunshine Coast but couldn't get there because the roads were cut off, there were sections of bridges floating down the highway. It felt really apocalyptic. 

It is funny because, at the time, it's hectic, but they actually become the most memorable touring moments.

KEELEY: Flooding venues aside, you've played in some really cool spaces and places. Do you have any highlights? 

DOUGAL: Maybe it's because it's so fresh, but it is really hard to go past Camp A Low Hum. The way the festival was curated and the community they've built was incredible. It's hard to overstate my respect and adoration for it. 

In terms of venues, one that comes to mind is a space in Koln (Cologne) in Germany called Club Scheisse which means Shit Club. It was a DIY space in an industrial area; a big roller door with graffiti and stickers everywhere. Again, there was a real sense of community, as though the space created the community, not the other way around. 

We weren't even sure if people would show up, being on the other side of the world for the first time, but the energy was heaving. People were hanging off the roof rafters and jumping off the staircase, and it was such a cool space to be in. 

Coming into and across spaces like that is always super exciting and inspiring for me. Seeing that other people are on the exact same program and in the same mindset is very affirming. 

KEELEY: Yeah, being involved in something greater than yourself is always refreshing. Coming from this hyper-independent, hyper-individual mindsets we exist in, it's nice to see people united for a singular purpose, all dancing to the same tune. 

DOUGAL: 100%. Growing up in a tiny town near Rockhampton called Emu Park, there really was nothing going on. When I was 15 I moved to the Gold Coast and kinda landed in the punk/hardcore scene. Coming from Rocky to that inclusive DIY community was really valuable to me and had a big impact on the way I go about things. 

It's funny, a friend of mine says it's not really DIY, it's DIT - Do It Together. I love that. It's about fostering the DIY mindset in order to create community.

KEELEY: And did your relationship with music begin in those stages? 

DOUGAL: In a way, but I guess I was a bit of a late bloomer. Even though my Dad was a muso and I’d grown up around it I only properly picked up a guitar at 18. I'd been moving around a lot, travelling overseas and experiencing different ways of life, and during those times, I always had a guitar on me, but it wasn't really something I'd fully pursued. 

It was actually when I came back from living in the UK. My Dad had a stroke the day after I got home and I spent a year and a half caring for him. At that time, I played my guitar daily and started writing songs and getting a band together. Once we got Dad up to scratch I moved to Melbourne, chasing the music.

KEELEY: Is that when you started Dr Sure’s?

Dr Sure’s was kind of accidental. I’d been in Melbourne for 6 or 7 years, I had a few bands that were fading out a bit and we just got the boot from the warehouse/creative space/venue/studio I was running, where I started Marthouse Records. 

All of a sudden I had heaps of time on my hands. I started writing music as a daily practice, just writing a song a day with no real end goal. The songs I wrote went into this folder called Unusual Prac. That's actually where the name came from, my initials are D R Shaw (Dr Sure) so I put the two together and now we're stuck with this silly band name.

KEELEY: You've just released your new single, Celebration. How's the reception of that been?

DOUGAL: So we released that song and went to New Zealand pretty much straight after. My phone was off the whole time I was away, so I'm not actually too sure! When I got home I had a bunch of emails from radio stations who had featured it or put it on rotation which is nice. So I guess it's been good, just bubbling away. 

To be honest it's been nice not being so "online" after the release because it typically makes me really anxious. When I'm too immersed in the computer screen and worrying about how it's being received, it can really do my head in. 

KEELEY: Do you think that's because of the expectations around the day and the 'hype' of it all?

DOUGAL: Yeah, I think that's part of it, but I also think it takes a lot of courage to share something that's authentic. You take your inner turmoil and struggles and make it public. Sometimes it's easier making fun, silly music (which I also love to do) but to make art that comes from authenticity is quite a vulnerable thing. 

Sharing your art takes a level of courage no matter what, but when you're showing others something that feels really ‘real’ it can be scary.

KEELEY: You've got a music video out! Tell me about it. 

DOUGAL: The song itself is kind of riffing on this capitalist wellness dystopia that's constantly telling us everything is fine even though you can see it's all cooked. But it's also about celebrating those communities that we surround ourselves with that make things a little bit easier and more bearable. 

The music video is a surrealist response to those cues, the people around you lifting you up and helping you keep your head screwed on, but it's also just absurd and weird and fun. I can sit here and contextualise it, but I'll leave it at that.

KEELEY: Would you say the rest of your upcoming album follows the same motifs as Celebration? What can we expect from it?

DOUGAL: Thematically, I suppose we're in similar spaces of me trying to grapple with existential questions and make sense of things. I guess I use music as a way of processing that stuff. Sonically, though, we've been exploring new styles, some krautrock, dubby trip-hop stuff, and some more mellow songs in the mix - still running our classic synth punk style, too. 

The album feels really eclectic. We've taken the sound to places we haven't really touched before, some fresh instruments and fresh collaborations. It's an exciting new chapter. It’s been super fun and challenging playing the new stuff on tour. What’s that saying, ‘if you’re not growing, you’re dying’?

We can't wait to share it.

SEE DSUP LIVE - TICKETS HERE

INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | WEBSITE