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It’s been far too long since The Rakes ripped up stagnant boardrooms, beer-stained pub carpets and indie discos with the pay packet rants and boozy musings of the sublime ‘Capture/Release’. Since then, they’ve well and truly logged off from office-job drudgery, and perhaps started to wave goodbye to Wetherspoons two-dinner deals and cut price cocktails for the new album. “There’s only one song about being hung-over and going into work, just one to remain true”, Alan explains.
With the bell of last orders tolling quietly in the background, swiftly downed pints are laid to rest: The Rakes are moving onwards and upwards from the firm foundations of their debut. “We realised a lot of the songs were really short, so the songs are a bit longer. They’re more developed: obviously we’ve got better at the job, so they’re a bit more complicated: there’s more with backing vocals, we’ve been trying different stuff. It’s not really avant-garde or experimental or anything, it’s just quite a big step on for us. It’s better.”
The hangover following ‘Capture/Release’, it seems, has not been one of fuzzy heads, nausea and unwelcome bedfellows. Alan’s explanation of the new material proves to be a profound departure: “it sounds really pretentious, well it doesn’t if you hear the record, but it’s about having different characters in it, quite day-to-day characters, and their responses to what’s going on in the world: the bigger stuff, like terrorism. It’s not really political but it’s a bit about the war in Iraq, but we definitely don’t wanna be like Rage Against The Machine or anything.”
Although ‘Ten New Messages’ is, apparently “ still very down to earth, its not existential or global or anything like that”, with titles like ‘The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect’, there’s definitely a bit more of the thinking man coming through. “The character in that song is like a sort of vacuous male model who would go on protests and war marches and things like that, only because it might be cool or something.” Thrown into the melting pot of social commentary and world-wide awareness is also an essential splash of Heat magazine Technicolor: even Hollywood gets a mention in the bizarrely titled ‘When Tom Cruise Cries’.
Alan explains the idea behind the track: “It’s sort of about the news - nowadays it sensationalises real events to keep you engrossed. It’s like with the London bombings: on CNN there’s this American guy going ‘Terror in London!’ it’s like watching a film, it’s surreal. Another side of the coin is about actors, how their job is really to lie to get you involved in a film. There’s a film Tom Cruise did and at the end he breaks down crying. It’s really engrossing, it’s so powerful. It’s about the blurred line between fantasy in films and what you see on the news. So that’s the subject matter, pretty deep. To stop it being like an essay, you just have to make it into a pleasant song.”
Pleasant, is perhaps an understatement as far as The Rakes are concerned, as anyone who’s ever shared in the contagious charms of their raucous live shows can testify. So, for all the skinny-trousered troubadours in waiting, here’s the secret:
“I’ve just always thought, ‘what would I like to see on stage’? And try and have a bit of fun, and hopefully the sunshine will spread out, not just like it’s a day job in an office or something, just give it your all.”
Alan is no stranger to speaking his mind, however. Unlike certain fur-trimmed-turncoat divas, despite dabbling in modelling simply because “I need the money”, he takes pride in his values: “Burberry approached for us to be in an advert with other bands I think, and then I found out they support fur, and so I just turned them down and wrote a letter to the boss saying why. It’s very passive really. I just don’t like people torturing animals to death and I try not to promote it.”
However, it seems Bob Geldof need not fear adding more greys to his silver mane just yet. The crown of piety is by no means coveted by The Rakes: just enjoying themselves and sheer entertainment is in no danger of taking a backseat to venting their views: “now I’ve found myself in a band, I think of my friends, and I thought, ‘what would get me out the house to see a live band’? I thought it would be not only something I could dance to but something I’d appreciate. I didn’t have this big career plan, but now I’ve got this opportunity, you think ‘what can I do with this’? It’s not really making a point, but hopefully people can relate to it.”
So, with pressing issues like terrorism and Jade Goody always lurking menacingly in our collective social conscience, it’s good to know that Alan hasn’t forgotten about what really matters in his tentative plans for album number three: “quite a lot of songs about sex, relationships and stuff like that, a bit lighter than this album.” With ‘Ten New Messages’ out in March, a European tour and Glastonbury on the cards, nine to fives are a surely nothing but a distant memory for The Rakes. For now, at least: caution, ties and shiny shoes haven’t been entirely thrown to the wind. When politicians and the media seem more flaky than a Head and Shoulder’s ‘before’ model, who can you turn to for advice? Robert Smith, apparently: “he said every time you make an album, treat it likes it’s your last, coz it’s quite possible that it may be - It might completely bomb and you might have to go back to your day jobs when you were 18 or something. You don’t know what will happen, I’d like to think that we’ll be doing what were doing for a while, but you never know.”
So, let’s all raise our glasses and broadsheets: long live The Rakes. Sex, global terrorism and rock n’ roll.
