More Than Your Garden Variety Band

By Joe Kavanagh

Several things stand out about London act, The Rakes. In a music world so often populated by vacuous, debauched pop stars, they are deeply proud of their intellectual inclination. While they certainly don't shirk a party, they are as likely to be found sitting on the tour bus reading the latest novel by Bill Bryson or Richard Dawkins after a gig, as getting hammered backstage surrounded by sycophants and hangers-on. Additionally, there are not many bands that can count a vegan, a vegetarian and a former nanny amongst their number. Mostly though, it is the music and highbrow lyrics that separate the four-piece from the crowd, and their songs are epitomized by choppy guitar-lines accompanying tales about compromised lives spent in lower-management positions, compensated for with stints as weekend warriors wasted from Friday until Sunday. At a time when most UK acts are singing about blinging or existing amongst the grime, The Rakes describe themselves as 'the first post-David Brent band', dealing with the mundanity that can often accompany life spent in an anonymous cubicle in a sprawling office space.

Formed in 2002, the band was born when guitarist Mathew Swinnerton and bassist Jamie Hornsmith asked their friend Alan O'Donohue if he would be interested in singing in their group. Despite having no prior experience as a frontman, his friends felt that he was 'someone who didn't mind being a bit of a d***head on stage.' The trio had also befriended a Danish immigrant, Lasse Peterson, who was in London working as a child-minder and asked him if he would sit in on drums, notwithstanding the fact that he had no experience either. Hardly the most firm foundation for a band but as the four settled down and began to take the experiment seriously, they realized that they had stumbled onto something when friends and acquaintances began to rave about some of the tunes they began producing. Keeping the formula simple, the band were determined not to follow in the footsteps of the endless amount of kids picking up guitars at the time, only to churn out ersatz Radiohead or some new appalling take on grunge. Instead they looked to acts like Bowie, Blur and The Strokes for their melodic inspiration but people like Phil Lynott and Kate Bush when it came to lyrics, because of the latter two's propensity for relating stories of ordinary everyday life in their songs. Their name came from the fact that the band members are all pencil thin and kept getting told that they were 'skinny as rakes.'

After several months rehearsing, the band hit the vast London scene and almost immediately made a name for themselves with a show that is punchy, energetic and features O'Donohue jumping around like a crazy person on stage. Asked once whether his stage act was inspired by the late-Ian Curtis of Joy Division, the singer replied only half tongue-in-cheek that his act was motivated by Michael Barrymore. In late 2004, the band's career gained a huge shot of momentum when a tiny local independent label released their first single 22 Grand Job: a post-punk ode to life low on the totem pole as an entry-level office worker. Although not even two minutes long, the track was enough to gain the attention of all the major labels and Virgin offshoot V2 began to track them before signing the band to a multi-album deal in April of the following year. In September of 2005, the band released their debut album, Capture/Release, which offered more of the same sharp, hard-hitting, post-punk sound and spawned a couple more hit singles in the form of Capture and another ode to office life in the shape of Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep). The band also went on several tours of the UK, Europe and Japan opening for acts like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party, as well as perfunctory stops at summer festivals in Leeds and Reading.

After a brief break the band entered the studio late last year and began work on their follow-up, enlisting the help of producers Jim Abiss (Arctic Monkeys) and Brendan Lynch (Primal Scream). The fruits of their labor will soon be revealed to the world with the announcement last week that Ten New Messages will be released in March of this year. The band describe it as an eminently more mature effort, forgoing the simple, short and snappy formula for a decidedly longer, more textured approach to tunes that will tackle more heady subject matter such as the war in Iraq and the reality of living under the threat of terrorism in London. Although many who lament the death of protest music will be delighted at the prospect of a band tackling the meaty issues, fans of the first album will be pleased to know that the new record will also contain a contingent of songs chronicling the struggles of ordinary life. O'Donohue describes it as being 'inspired by a combination of choral music, the television show '24', Bond theme tunes, World War 1 poets and the Sugababes'. With the buzz and media chatter already building, 2007 could be a big year for The Rakes.