Flooded with anxiety and existential dread, Higgs wrote ‘Fallout’ at the beginning of lockdown, recalling a dreaded trip to yet another supermarket with limited supplies, but this time to the tune of Bobby McFerrin’s indelible ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ blaring over the speakers. Higgs remembers asking himself the obvious, “Is this it?”.
Red Rum Club hails from Liverpool. But as you read this new edition of the Bandsintown, Hypebot, and CelebrityAccess “6 Questions With” series, the indie band is early in a 14-city tour of the USA and Canada.
Your sound feels smartly planned but with a heavy dose of fun. For example, your new track, “Vanilla,” begins with a retro distorted bass riff sitting atop a thumping beat. Then the song builds from there, but with some strategic musical pauses. Is that the kind of playful build that fans can expect at shows on your current US tour, or does winning over a live audience require different pacing?
‘Smartly planned but with a heavy dose of fun’ could be a very good way to describe this band. I think for us, we view the US in the same way we viewed the UK when we were first starting out there.
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Red Rum Club, “Vanilla” – Red Rum Club is an independent U.K. rock band with a trumpet player. It’s opened for The 1975 and Noel Gallagher, and played the Glastonbury and Isle of Wight festivals.
“Vanilla” has a bass line that sounds a little like the The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” but a much fuller musical sound, since the band is a sextet. The song is about a lover who leaves because she finds the narrator boring: “She said my darling, my dear/ I’m filled with a fear/ Concerning a flaw that/ Continues to appear/ You’re living for Monday/ Your living is mundane/ Your presence is a killer/ Your flavor: vanilla.”
“Growing Up (For You)” reveals the intricate cross-roads of Americana that Sonja sits at — opening with the dusty rhythms of galloping drums and the driving gloam of myriad guitars. But it’s also imbued with an ethereal electronica that haunts the empty spaces between its lush instrumentation.
LOS ANGELES — Coma Girls played at the Echoplex Sunday night as part of its Grand Ole Echo series, and also as an album release celebration for No Umbrella for Star Flower. It was their first show in three years, and frontman Chris Spino’s first show since getting sober.
If Spino felt any pressure in that regard, he didn’t show it. Dressed simply in a white shirt and white hat, he marveled at being on the Echoplex stage after his years as a bartender there.
“I used to work here,” he told the audience. “And now I’m getting to play here, this is really cool.”
There are, of course, ample doses of guitar goodness throughout, most notably on a trippy cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe, which sees Farees laying down fierce, wah-soaked rhythms before heading to the outer limits with a turbo-charged solo. And on the widescreen funk masterpiece The Melting, he’s joined by Meters guitar legend Leo Nocentelli, who joyously weaves a colorful quilt of intricate six-string textures.