The Rakes - We Danced Together

The Rakes
We Danced Together
Video

Ten New Messages is the second album from London’s most switched-on, keyed-up young band. It is, literally, ten new messages contained in ten new songs. Musically for The Rakes it was about broadening their palette – the short-sharp-shock of their first album, Capture/Release, has given way to longer, ‘more developed, complicated songs. ‘We’ve not gone avant-garde or experimental or anything,’ the band say. ‘We’ve just got better at our jobs.’

Ten New Songs, then, is ten concise blasts from the here and now, but powerful enough to retain their relevance tomorrow and the day after.

As with many of the songs on Ten New Messages, the point is not scare tactics or shock for the sake of it. ‘I love the visceral quality of some hip hop lyrics,’ says this singer with a band who have worked with grime stars Statik and Lethal Bizzle (Donohoe sings on Statik’s next album). ‘It’s just something that grabs your ear. Nothing washes over you. But it’s a real skill to do that and not just try and be controversial. In Suspicious Eyes a lot of the lyrics were too shocking to put in – concerned with racism and the like. It’s important to keep some ambiguity in.’

We Danced Together is a case in point. A huge pop song already leaping out of radio speakers, it’s about romance in the face of street curfews, debris and flying bullets. Is this a love story set in a fascist near-future? Or something that happened last year? Or the emotional ravings of a couple ‘aving it a house party? Don’t really matter. It’s a blinding tune.

Half of Ten New Messages was recorded in Lincolnshire with producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian), half in London with Brendan Lynch (Primal Scream, Paul Weller).