Get The Message: The Rakes

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.”