Tim Hughes talks to Darwin Deez about falling in love with the guitar once again

Darwin Deez fingers a battered white guitar, and gently laughs “I always wanted to play one of these,” he says. “But I’m more interested in playing the guitar now than when I first started. I have found my inner Hendrix.”

With his bold moustache, flowing ringlets and trademark headband, New Yorker Darwin Merwan Smith (aka Deez) is a distinctive, if enigmatic figure, and has moved from bedroom guitarist, to sometime rapper and fronting the indie-rock band which bears his name. But it is now, with the release of his third album, that he feels he has accomplished what he set out to achieve – and that has included falling back in love with the guitar.

“I got started when I was 11 and learned the chords and pentatonic scale,” he recalls. “But I was frustrated that I couldn’t shred, so I would take a tuning fork and whack it on the guitar.

“Then I quit when I was 13. I was exposed to the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, and was blown away by drum ‘n’ bass; it was all electronic music in my teens. But I kept my old white Stratocaster and picked it up again when I was 18.

“I still play it now – and it’s still got little dings in it.”

Darwin Deez has always been bigger on this side of the pond – seeing success with his eponymous debut album and follow up Songs For Imaginative People. A multi-instrumentalist, he plays everything in the studio, assembling a band to play live.

A hit at Oxfordshire’s Truck festival, and elsewhere, he has acquired cult status, in part based on his low-fi approach to music, philosophical lyrics and energetic live shows.

He describes his latest album, last month’s Double Down, as the culmination of all his efforts so far, reflecting that new-found love of the guitar. “There’s more of a blues influence on it,” he explains. “Blame me as that’s something I always hated for years.

Why? “Harmonically every blues song is the same, and I found that so monotonous. But recently I’ve been getting into guitar solos, and the best are blues as you can play all 12 notes in a blues solo and do it dynamically. I find I’ve got an appreciation of the blues.”

And, on the subject of picking up the guitar, he has a confession. “After five years of not playing, I decided to take some strings off to make it easier to get in the groove. That crystallised into just using four strings to make it easier for myself. I still write using random stringing and tuning. Most of my debut album was written on that guitar. It leaves you with a spare finger for every chord you play. Though by the second album I was up to six strings!”

Darwin is at home in Brooklyn, preparing for a tour which, on Monday, sees him playing Oxford’s O2 Academy.

“I’ve got some work to do to get the gig ready, but it’s going to be good,” he says.

“I’ve got this pedal board with a special system of control – it has a lot of brain. And I can control guitar, effects, musical cues and stage lighting. I guess that means I have two brains; I have a rival that works with me here. But you don’t see him!”

And, he says, he can’t wait to get to Britain – where he made his name. The UK is, he tells me, a second home.

“The flight is so short and I come over so many times – and not just for shows but promotional things. It’s starting to feel like a commute. And everything is the same but everything is different.

“There are so many subtle differences. All the restaurants close in the middle of the day, which I find quite amazing. After a sleep-in – or, as you say there, ‘a lie in’ – I’m ready to eat at 4pm and everywhere’s shut – ‘or closed’, as you’d say.

“Then, the women there wear so much make-up. They don’t wear much make-up here, and it’s strange how that’s a thing.

“Also there’s pub culture. You walk past a pub at 5pm and it’s full of adults. It’s not really like that in New York – except maybe in the Irish pubs in Midtown.”

A highlight of the set is sure to be latest single Kill Your Attitude. In the video for the song, Darwin appears in a video game-type reality, an edgy hybrid of the Sims and Call of Duty.

“The fun part was the shower scene,” he laughs. “We were shooting for 12 to 14 hours to go on the green screen, and at the end of a long day they dumped water on me.

“They’ve done that before – but at least it was warm this time.”

SEE HIM
Darwin Deez plays the O2 Academy in Cowley Road, Oxford, on Monday.
Tickets from ticketweb.co.uk