I spoke to Frank Carter and Dean Richardson about the Rattlesnakes 5th album, Dark Rainbow, ahead of their upcoming tour.
They play the o2 Academy Bristol on the 7th of February.
Anna: So first of all, give us an idea of who Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes are as a band, because you’ve gone through some pretty serious genre transformations in this album. How do you go about making that decision to switch up the genre a bit?
Frank: We’re just a snake that likes to shed its skin, but we’re very much still the same snake. So that’s, I think, I think the easiest way to describe us. We just enjoy…Like music is a fluid process.
And it just feels nice to swim around in it rather than be stuck in it. I think when you’re young musicians, you don’t have the confidence to act that you get so scared of losing it. You know, if you have any amount of success, you want to cling on to it. For us, the success is that our band even exists so it’s really nice just to be able to make the music we love. That would be it for me.
Dean: I really think what we’re doing on each record is the same and the result is that the sound is different, but I think it feels like some people think that this sort of change of direction is like a new way to do an album but like, we did this album the same as we did last time, just trying to find a lot out about ourselves and also on a more sort of simple sense, just 10 or more songs that we love. And that doesn’t mean they change but the approach hasn’t really so, I don’t know, it’s more like we’re doing the same thing and we’re getting different results because we’ve always been trying to just push ourselves and explore so yeah, the change doesn’t really feel that conscious. It’s just more results of the of the work we’re putting into it.
Frank: Yeah, we’ve been a band now for nine years! And I just always think like, I’m not the same person I was yesterday, let alone nine years ago. And I’m really grateful for it and I just want to be able to continue that growth.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me a bit more about your collaboration process when you were making this album? What goes into what goes into making these songs?
Frank: It’s effortless, our collaboration process. The first steps happen separately. I write lyrics all the time and Dean writes music all the time and we collate them into little pockets that sort of naturally group together, you know, and then nothing really happens for Rattlesnakes until we actually sit down together in a room. Dean will just play me some music. He’ll just play through the bits that he has and quite often I’m already in my lyrics looking and melodies will just jump out, rhythms, the way I want to sing something will just make sense. And as soon as one does, we just focus on it and we see what else there is, you know. Like as soon as there’s a match, a door opens. And that’s it. We’re in. We’re straight through the door. And God knows, we have no idea where it goes or what it leads to. Some lead us straight back to the room with more doors. And others are like a fucking Odyssey and we’re gone for years. But what it is, is it’s an exploration and it’s magic, and I’m just so grateful to have that in my life. It’s my favourite thing to do; Just write music. It’s just so much fun.
Anna: I’m always interested in the sequencing of an album. So can you talk to me a bit about how you went through the process of putting it all together?
Frank: We think about it from a record point of view, right Dean? Like always, from a vinyl point of view.
Dean: we also do a lot on instinct but we really test ourselves and challenge each other and I think there’s a nice balance between not overthinking things and then like some things like track listing…Yeah, we’ll be texting each other late at night like “Wait, I’ve just heard this song into this song. You need to listen to that and see what that makes you feel”. One of the most critical to this record, I think was Queen of Hearts/ Sun Bright together that you kind of stumbled across, Frank, and that really changed the whole flow of the whole record. Then suddenly you’re like, well then Superstar has a place now. We definitely don’t just pick like the best 12, like, we’re not just looking for 12 songs that we think might do well out in the world or that people enjoy, it was the 12 that can go in an order and feel complete. Weirdly it’s one of the things that I’m the most proud of, is that I think our track listings are really good!
Frank: Lyrically it always has a narrative and I’m always amazed at how the songs before and after, affect the song in between. I never get to find that out until we get close to the end and that’s always really special. Yeah, I’ve always loved that moment.
Dean: I think it’s probably obvious but track one and the last track…The first and last track are often the real difficult ones that kind of keep checking you. I think that’s because on track one it feels like you want to sort of give enough of a broad overview of what’s about to come and that includes kind of like all the lyrics touching on the right… But it’s a very hard thing to do because you can’t really represent a whole record so that one can be a bit of a difficult one. And then the final tracks are a special place and I think we usually find them the easiest to agree on because there’s not 12 options, there’s usually like two or three. I think lyrics for me matter the most on the final track. I think how you leave people with what you’ve last said is very important they were always was for me growing up so, I don’t get super involved in lyrics, but I care about the last lyrics a lot more.
Frank: It’s really interesting to me that, out of the five albums we’ve made, four of them, the album title comes from a track within the album. Like End of Suffering and Dark Rainbow, they’re both the final track on the record. And when we finished End of Suffering, I felt like we had unfinished business and that, to me, was this album. It wasn’t Sticky. Sticky was very much a reaction to the pandemic and the situation that we’re in. And it feels to me like, which is kind of a wild statement to make, but we finished Dark Rainbow, we’ve released it, its not even been out for a week and I feel like we’ve got unfinished business with this record. So it’s nice. It’s… I love the way… I just love music, man. I love music. I love being in the band. I love playing and I love writing music and I just love the mystery of it all. So I’m just forever trying to find what it means. I hope I never do.
Anna: Absolutely! Can you talk to me a bit more about Self Love because it’s one of my favourite tracks on the record and I’d love to know what inspired it and the story behind that.
Frank: So…do you want to talk about the music, Deano, before I talk about the lyrics?
Dean: I think the most interesting thing about the song musically is that we recorded it for Sticky.
And this has happened quite a few times over the years but usually Frank has a really strong instinct on whether these songs are from now or from the future. But during Sticky that was the only time where I’ve kind of said this song isn’t for now. But I was producing Sticky so it was quite difficult for me because I was trying to work out if I just couldn’t get it right or if it wasn’t right and I feel so strongly now…I didn’t know even when we finished the record, I remember thinking that could have been a single and I might have just not been able to do it, but now I hear it in context with Dark Rainbow and it feels insane now. We were trying to make it something it wasn’t, in Sticky. And it was so easy to produce for this record… So yeah, I think it found its home we just had to be patient, which is hard to do with music, but I love it.
Frank: Lyrically is it’s a mantra, you know, to live by. It’s just it’s a love letter to yourself, really and to remind you of how important it is to make space for yourself to hold space for yourself, to care for yourself. Some of us find it so easy to care for others and yet we cannot find that priority for ourselves. You know?
And I think for me that came from maybe just um… I found that a hard concept to understand. I didn’t put a huge amount of value on myself. I couldn’t see it. I could see how I could help others and that blinded me to recognising how little I was doing for me as a person; how little I gave myself.
And it’s not a definitively non ego thing when I talk about loving yourself. It’s a kindness. It’s a care, you know? Anyone could love themselves in a narcissistic sense. It’s much harder to truly care for yourself and want to better yourself because you have to believe that you deserve it. And I didn’t for such a long time. So the song… it means the world to me that it’s out because, at a time when I have found that for myself, and I really do care for myself and I want better, and that means that I can go and sing that song in a way where I can really truly lead and I can show people that it’s possible.
Anna: Absolutely. I love that song. That means a lot to me. So you guys are touring with this album can we expect some of the classics as well? What’s the setlist like so far? What can you give away?
Frank: The setlist is fucking unhinged, because it’s beautiful chaos, you know? I find that with every album we make, we become more complete as a band, you know. We don’t get further away from what we were, we get closer to what we should have always been. And that’s, I think, what some people may misunderstand. I think certain people who like our first record would have liked us to never deviate from that because, in their eyes, that’s all they needed from us. But they ignore the fact that we needed more than that and we will forever so it’s beautiful to sit and play a song like Self Love and watch that melt into a song like a Kitty Sucker. And then very short period of time, somehow that seamlessly transitions into a song like Juggernaut. And it all just makes sense and it all just still has impact. And then before you know it, you’re singing a song like Angel Wings and then you’re on the piano and you’ve got a spotlight on you and you’re singing Sun Bright Golden Happening, and not at any point of the of that act as anyone lost any conviction. Because it’s all us.
Dean: I think the more songs we have, the more, I agree totally, that certainly there was a point we didn’t play Juggernaut for a while because the set, in general, was so loud and in your face that it wasn’t Juggernaut that we needed in that moment. But now, you sort of get to a point in your set and you’re like “Yeah it’s Juggernaut now. Of course it is”. The problem we’ve got is just time. Like, we’ve got so many options now, even on the day we can adjust to our mood a little bit which is an incredible place to be, because there’s nothing worse than not feeling connected to a certain sound. But we’ve still probably got an hour and a half maximum and 62 songs. So on one hand loads more extra avenues we can go down and on the other hand, a nightmare when you look at the list of songs that haven’t made it. I think we’re going to be rotating like four set lists. We’re going to try and play as many as possible.
Anna: So, I have a last question. I’m a photographer. So, I just want to know about the album cover. What inspired it?
Frank: What does it mean to you?
Anna: To me, it’s like… like a solitude but not a loneliness.
Frank: That’s beautiful. That’s a really beautiful understanding. And I don’t think that anything I could say will help that along, and I certainly wouldn’t want to take anything away from you. What I will say is that that structure is our protagonist. You know, then all of the mystery around it and within. Someone described it as the tension between happiness and sadness and then you come along and say it’s a solitude and not a loneliness. And that’s just… Yeah.
@anna.h_photos
Role: Photographer/ Journalist
Available for: Gig and press phototography, album shoots, music videos, tour coverage
Qualification: 1st class BA photojournalism degree
First attended gig: First ticketed gig I remember is Newton Faulkner but there was plenty of live music that I saw growing up in the folk scene in Cornwall
First gig shot: Rattler Fest for all three days
Dream gig: It's too hard to pick just one, and i'm lucky enough to have been able to shoot some of my bucket list bands already, so top 3 would have to be Frank Turner, The Hives, and Twenty One Pilots
