Wake Up To The Rumble Strips

“Beep beep beep, get on your feet, you gotta get a job” chirps ‘Alarm Clock’; The Rumble Strips’ ska-dazzling paean to early morning grumbles and sighs.  Thankfully, they have settled rather nicely away from job centre blues into fully employed rock star status.  When Gigwise meets The Rumble Strips (minus vocalist Charlie), their chipper trumpeted tunes mirror their cheery mind-set.  This is clearly a band that knows each other inside out from their picture-postcard; clotted cream topped formative years in Devon. 

However, Henry (trumpet/vocals/piano) is quick to point out that this is by no means conducive to a unformed rigidity a la iForward Russia!: “someone was saying to us the other day about this ‘gang’ thing, which we never really got, I guess we don’t really feel like a gang in that we’ve got a kind of philosophy or anything like that or that we all dress the same, its just that having been in each others company for a long time.”

In a touchingly romantic case of music bringing the kids together, The Rumble Strips made their fresh-faced foray into, er, rock and roll. “We all just kind of did the youth club thing on a Saturday after noon where anyone could turn up and play instruments, there were like 5 guitarists,”  Matt (drums) explains.  Well, not entirely rock and roll, but using this endearing ensemble as a springboard, Rumble Strips took the leap from the golden sands of Devon to the golden-paved London streets.  “Opportunities for gigs and stuff in Devon are limited though really”, Tom(sax/vocals/bass) shrugs.  In a city where many bands would gladly pleasure a piss soaked tramp for a break, or cut off their plimsoll-shod toes to squeeze into one scene or another, it takes good, old fashioned character and conviction to ignore this kind of lunacy.

Tom tells us that the city has had little impact on Rumble Strips outlook: “Over the years it hasn’t really changed at all, I don’t really think we’ve been influenced by a London sound.”  Henry agrees:  “I think it can be really good to feel part of a scene, particularly for young bands to work out what they’re doing.  I don’t think we’ve changed our sound since coming to London.   Its just that you get a lot more opportunities to play and you get a lot better a lot quicker as well.”

Still stoically shunning chin-stroking pretension, Charlie’s art-school nuances have also catalysed Rumble Strips development: “I think I saw a change in the way he approaches stuff, just going to art college makes you think slightly differently”, Henry muses.  “He did form Vincent Vincent and the Villains with his mate Mark so that band came out of there [art school],” Tom adds.  And, what the White Cube is to the Art world, this white elephant perhaps is to Rumble Strips.  The Villains’ turncoat-tale anthem ‘Johnny Two Bands’ is famously the hand-clapping, melancholic documentation of Charlie’s previous double commitment.  Not that this seems at all to trouble the other band members.  “It was hard at first coz he was in two bands at the same time and obviously you start not being able to turn up to things coz you’re committed to both.  There’s a point where it becomes very tense but once that changes there’s no tension”, Tom clarifies.