Tastes Like Caramel

TLC vs. The Rakes: The New York Wrap-Up Interview

I had the pleasure of catching The Rakes‘ return to New York at Bowery Ballroom on Monday, and a supplemental experience speaking with Alan, Jamie, Lasse and Matthew the following day at their hotel in the glamorous Tribeca Grand.

After seeing lead singer Alan Donohoe’s rather entertaining and hilarious antics the night before, I was unsure whether he’d be replying to my questions in song (it only happened once.) Anyway, without further ado here is my very interesting, ecstatic and fun interview with The Rakes.

Make sure you pick up Klang (unfortunately not available in the US yet), and make sure to catch them at a city near you, you’ll thank me later!

MP3: The Rakes – Retreat (The Phones Remix) or zShare

MP3: The Rakes – We Dance Together (SebastiAn Remix) or zShare

> Hi guys, so we’re here in the lounge of Tribeca Grand. You played Bowery Ballroom last night, how did do you feel about that show?
Alan: It was fun. That’s the third time we’ve played Bowery. The crowd is a bit like LA, cool contained guys and girls. It was definitely great to get some moshing though!

> Have you seen your audience change a bit?
Alan: I can’t remember the last show but by all other accounts, yeah. Last night was a bit of a “bomb stormer!”
Jamie: Tonight should be good as well as it’s a tiny venue. Apparently the stage is only [this] big.
Alan: It’s in the phone box.

> I was here for your DJ set at Tribeca Grand. What songs are a must when you’re DJ-ing?
Lasse: Yeah that was great, I really enjoyed that actually. I can’t remember what I played…
Alan: Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen always goes down very well.
Lasse: I played a remix of The Whitest Boy Alive by a guy named Fred Falke, that’s quite good. And a remix that Matthew told me about which is by Dan Lissvik from Studio, it’s a song by Fever Ray which is the side project of the girl from The Knife.

> Why did you guys decide to record the latest album, Klang in Berlin?
Alan: (sings and laughs to himself  “Um…. because…. it’s…. nice.”) No, the first song we wrote for the album was 1989, which is sort of about Berlin. That sort of got us thinking about recording in Berlin; we wanted to get out England…
Lasse and Alan: Shake things up a bit….
Alan: Yeah and then we went out and did this recon trip and found this studio that was really interesting that we eventually went over to record in.
Lasse: Our producer’s from New York and he sort of suggested that we just record in New York, he’s got a studio just down the road. We thought that’d be cool but we also felt that it would be good to get out of our comfort zone and him get out of his too. Go out as a gang somewhere and go record, it would be exciting and might bring something to the record. So Chris heard of this band called Liars who used the studio in Berlin and I went to check it out. It’s a really cool and interesting place, it’s an old Soviet radio station.

> Did any of that rub off onto the creative process?
Lasse: Sure I reckon. Lyrically slightly because a lot of the songs were written before we went in, they sort of changed in to the environment in which we were staying some of the times. And also just atmosphere-wise, a certain atmosphere in the old radio station: abandonment and isolation. When you play within the atmosphere something comes across in the music, something you can’t really put your finger on.

> You have a remix contest up right now…
Alan: Oh Yeah! That’s right, that’s good.
Lasse: Some are pretty good (laughs.)
Jamie: Some good ones, some bad ones.

> So since the last album, last tour what are some of the big changes you’ve seen in the industry?
Lasse: Well in the UK we used to have singles up until about 3 years ago, in America you don’t have singles…?

> We used to, I think it’s kind of a sad thing to see them gone…
Lasse: No well, nobody really does singles anymore at all in the UK and that’s kind of been a bit of a tradition you know.
Matthew: 7”..it’s all digital now.
Lasse: You know what, in this industry we sort of specialize in live I guess. Its kind of helped us in a funny sort of way because there’s a lot of markets that, for example last year when we weren’t promoting anything we tried going to a few new countries. We toured in Russia, Brazil, Bangkok, Singapore, Portugal, a lot of places we as a band wouldn’t traditionally go but are able to now because it’s available online. Actually there’s a shift to sell less records and to play to a more wide range of people.
Jamie: I think the change is more coming for the record labels rather than the bands, it’s really their thing that has to change – how to run a label I guess.

> Do you feel that you have to be more hands on? A lot of artists are taking control over…
Jamie: Yeah to some degree, like digitally. Online you have to be a bit more hands on and take things on yourself a bit, just get in contact with the fans. Now there’s like 810 different online applications MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. Just trying to keep everything up to date, we all do a bit of it.

> For the rest of the year, what are you looking forward to?
Jamie: Yeah everything, we’ve got a UK and Europe tour coming up now, about 10 days after we get back to London tomorrow. We’ve got a few days off, then we tour the UK and Europe for about 5-6 weeks. After that we’ve got festivals all summer and then we’re probably back in the states.

> Compare the London crowds to the New York crowds that attend your show.
Lasse: For us obviously we play to more people in London because we haven’t been there for 3 or 4 years. The first difference would be sheer numbers but apart from that…
Alan: I think it’s pretty similar. A few the trendy dudes hanging around like looking a bit cool at the bar and then those what we call the geezers or the jocks. We got a few of those last night.
Lasse: In England and America we get a lot of geezers, or jocks coming. I think it’s pretty cool.
Jamie: Then there’s those indie kids who come along. It’s pretty similar sorts of people. I think New York and London are pretty similar in that way.
Matthew: And quite a wide range of ages which is quite funny…

> Yeah I noticed that too…
Jamie: Yeah! Like a guy who came all the way from Philadelphia because we’ve never played there before. He was like “Yeah that’s it, I’m coming to the New York show.” He came last night, and he’s a bit of an older guy. I think it’s good to have a bit of a mixture because it means that you’re not just appealing to one certain crowd that will eventually grow out.
Lasse: I met 4 guys who [were] kind of jocks. They drove from Michigan for the gig. It’s a long drive.
Jamie: Rather than saying “ok these people are easily classifiable” but the fact is that it’s not just the scenesters. We have played shows in New York before, but perhaps everyone knew about us through Dior and that sort of thing because we did that thing with Dior. So it was a bit more of doing interviews with cool magazines and that sort of thing. It’s always good to go beyond that. You play these cool parties like here, but the Bowery is an interesting place, an interesting mix of people.

> I think that’s one of the best venues in Manhattan.
Jamie: Brilliant venue, we’ve played there about 3 times and they’re all been really good. Such a cool place. The atmosphere, the building itself.

> As the frontman to The Rakes, how important is crowd interaction to you?
Alan: How the crowd responds at a show is about 70-90% responsible for how good the show goes really because it’s kind of hard to get right into it personally. Some people just stand there with their arm crossed picking their nose. You kind of just feed off of them, it’s sort of a reciprocal dance off. If they see you all jumping around on stage, then the audience might be like “Well if they’re doing it!” Pretty much, if you’re having a good time up there, it’ll come across.

> Are there any recent books, film, or music that you’re currently excited about?
Alan: I’m looking forward to the Woody Allen film, it’s got Larry David. I saw in the newspaper that it was going to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

> You’re all about Tribeca!
Alan: Yeah. As far as books, there’s a really good book called Midnight’s Children i just finished reading, it’s a bit of an old one. I just recently got back into literature again. I found that more exciting than the new stuff.

> Well that’s about all I have for you, thanks so much for speaking to me and good luck at tonight’s show at Union Pool!

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09. April 2009 von anthoNYC
Categories: music news | Tags: bowery ballroom, music news, the rakes | Leave a comment