As reconciliations go, it’s safe to say that no one saw Death From Above 1979’s coming, including bassist Jesse F. Keeler and drummer-singer Sebastien Grainger.

“There was a long process of us resenting each other, which happened over the course of years, and we were both looking for a way to get out of it,” Grainger says, speaking from Los Angeles on the decision to blow the band up back in 2006.

Today, the duo is not only back together but making new music, with last year’s The Physical World a triumphant return to action. That’s shocked fans just as much as the guys who, nearly a decade ago, came to the conclusion that they had nothing left to say to each other.

Looking back on DFA 1979’s initial run, Grainger says he and Keeler were burned-out on the band as well as each other. For that, he blames becoming an instant sensation with their 2004 debut album, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Heavy touring followed, during which the two were together constantly. Instead of making them closer, it slowly drove them apart. Grainger acknowledges that both he and Keeler knew Death From Above 1979 was over.

“Basically, we went through a very intense experience together at a point in our lives where you’re still kind of defining who you are,” he recalls. “As those things are happening, your individuality really gets sucked out—when you’re in a band with other people, your personality, at least from the outside, kind of gets homogenized. We were both pretty strong personalities who were literally together all the time. To then be lumped together as this sort of one thing was difficult.”

DFA 1979 would spend two postbreakthrough years playing the same songs over and over again in concert. Fans of drum-and-bass dance-punk had no complaints. Grainger and Keeler, however, felt trapped, that leading the latter to famously announce the group’s end with the following Internet post: “over the last 3 years of touring, sebastien and i had grown apart to such an extent that the only real time we spoke was just before we would play and during interviews. we both changed so much that the people we were by the end of it, probably wouldnt have been friends if they were to meet for the first time again. its a totally normal function of growing up. like how your high school bf/gf that meant so much to you would probably be the last person you would date at 30, ya know?”

Those words would not only officially end Death From Above 1979 but lead to a half-decade of silence between Grainger and Keeler. Grainger says that for a long time, he didn’t even think about his former bandmate. And when he finally did, he realized that much of the bitterness and anger was gone.

“It was such an intense courtship and fruition and tragedy that it needed time to work itself out,” he says.

Most bands re-form strictly for a paycheque. But if The Physical World proves anything, it’s that Keeler and Grainger actually had plenty to say when they decided to give things another shot, the comeback starting with a 2011 live appearance at Edgefest. Those looking for the abrasiveness that first got the band noticed won’t be disappointed by the bludgeoning ferocity of “Government Trash”. But what impress most are the forays into new territory, from the snotty buzz-sawing Britpop of “Nothin’ Left” to the sweat-drenched turbofunk jam “Crystal Ball”.

After enlisting producer Dave Sardy (LCD Soundsystem, the Walkmen), the initial challenge was figuring out a way to limit their ambition, the studio they found themselves working in loaded with vintage synths and keyboards. From there, DFA 1979 embraced the idea that they had plenty of time to get things right, something that wasn’t the case during the recording of You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Back then, recording was done piecemeal, in between the live gigs and tours that paid the rent. That they were able to take their time with The Physical World changed the way they approached making music. Nowhere is their determination to break new ground more evident than on “White Is Red”, a chilled-out synth-waver that starts out a road-trip tale with the lines “Frankie was a heartbreaker/I didn’t know it at the start/She was only 16/But she went and broke my heart.”

“The first record is very relationship-centric,” Grainger says. “I was kind of still dealing with my parents’ divorce at the time—they divorced when I was 17, and some of those songs, lyrically at least, I started writing when I was 21. That really impacted my life. On this record, I deliberately went, ‘I’m not going to deal with my parents’ divorce.’

“But then you can look at the lyrics ‘Frankie was a heartbreaker’ on the new record,” Grainger continues. “You think, ‘Frankie’s a guy, or maybe he’s a girl.’ But Frankie was sort of a nickname that my mom had, and it kind of stemmed from there. Then I took it in a whole new direction.”

That direction on “White Is Red” at times suggests that Grainger is still working things out in his life. It also drives home that Death From Above 1979 is interested in something more than rehashing old glories.

“There’s a theme of abortion in there on that song,” the drummer reveals. “I was almost aborted, so I guess maybe I was dealing with that subconsciously, even though I was also really trying to write a narrative for the sort of ballad-y riff that Jesse wrote. For that song, for the first time, he wrote bass chords, which is something that he never would have done in 2001, 2002, or 2003 because, in our minds, it was such a ’90s thing to do. Back then, it would have been a joke because the ’90s were really close. Ten years later, we were like, ‘Wow—that sounds really nice.’

“And because it was a ballad, I was like, ‘Shit—I’ll write a ballad. I’ll write about people who are travelling, and there’s conflict, and resolution, and drama, and tragedy.’ To have all those things in a song is something that I’ve always wanted to do. I like the idea of taking a story and seeing it through.”

Which, one could say, also speaks volumes about the continued existence of Death From Above 1979. 

Death From Above 1979 plays the Vogue Theatre next Wednesday (January 21) and the Commodore next Thursday (January 22).