Exclusive: The Rakes Speak 'Terrorism' Tackling New Album

The Rakes have revealed that their new album tackles global issues such as terrorism.

Speaking to Gigwise, frontman Alan Donohue says the band touch on issues such the war in Iraq, but in their typically grounded style.

Speaking about the almost concept theme of the album, Alan told us: “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.”

Explaining how global issues are brushed upon in a much more scaled down, he referred to the fetchingly titled track ‘The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect.’

He continued: “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.”

Other tracks such as ‘When Tom Cruise Cries’, he explains, offer a critique on our media saturated society, while the album generally is more complex than their debut ‘Capture/Release.’

Donohue finished: “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.”