Interview: Red Rum Club

A year after the release of Red Rum Club’s stellar debut album Matador, the boys from Liverpool are back with their sophomore project The Hollow of Humdrum. While their debut album was followed by a nationwide tour, where the trumpet-toting sextet gained legions of new fans with their electrifying live performances - this time around it’ll be a bit longer before we see them in action. We spoke to Fran, lead singer of Red Rum Club, on the eve of the release of their incredible new album.

Credit: Sam Crowston

So, as we speak, your new album, The Hollow of Humdrum comes out tomorrow! How does it feel?

Nerve-wracking to be honest. It’s nerve-wracking, like you have it for so long and we were always very confident in it and passionate about it and very proud of it. But you just do have them last minute worries of what if people don’t quite get it, or not many people hear it. It’s nerve-wracking, but exciting as well just to get it out and to see whether people do like it. It’s gonna be hard to gage the response because there’s no live shows or anything. You can’t physically see the crowds growing. Who knows, we’ll have to wait and see! Excited and nervous!

It’s crazy to think that you guys only formed in 2016 and only last year your debut album, Matador had such great success: do you think you’ve gained more confidence as a group?

Yeah, we’re a lot more confident. Just through an experience you know what I mean, it comes with what we’ve done. Releasing ‘Matador’, you don’t know what to expect, you don’t know whether what you think is good, everyone else will feel is as good. It’s a bit of a test there, bit of a teaser to see whether you’re on the right track. We went to festivals all over the country and all over Europe and people were singing the songs back and we realised that we were like ‘oh yep, we know how to do this’ kinda thing.

Is there anything you took or learned from your first album to develop this one, or that sets it apart?

Well yeah, the formula. We were very conscious of we wanted ten songs, we wanted every song to have a reason, to have a meaning on the album and play a part on the album. There was no sort of ‘oh yeah, just throw that one on’. We had that with ‘Matador’ and we found out that a lot of people had different favourites. There was no one bad egg in the bunch, so we just had to do it for this one. We were very passionate about every song – If it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right.

Credit: Sam Crowston

That unique mariachi trumpet sound that is so familiar from Matador seems to have carried over, would you say that defines your sound?

Yeah, I think it did and people point it out in the first. It’s probably one of the things we subconsciously learned, we knew that the trumpet is a bit of a unique sound-point. We sort of wrote for that in ‘Matador’ – we were like ‘yeah let the trumpet do that line’ and let the trumpet just be out the front and very prominent and then we just milked it even more on this one.

Did you feel the impact of COVID and social distancing on the making of the album and recording process?

The second album was all recorded anyway before lockdown, it just put a pause on it. We were ready to release probably three months earlier. We were thinking the end of August I think and then when lockdown came in we stopped a second and paused to reassess the situation and put it back two or three months. But it did our head in a little bit because then we sat on the album and songs and listened to them every day and I got bored of them. So when we released ‘Eleanor’ and ‘Ballerino’ and ‘Elevation’ and everyone was like ‘oh that’s amazing’, or like ‘that’s dead good’, we’d sort of got bored of it.

Chris Taylor assisted with the production this time around, recording at Liverpool’s legendary Parr Street Studios. Was that quite a surreal experience?

Yeah, it’s become sort of our home. We’ve done quite a lot in Parr Street before, but every time you go in there you go without going in there for about two months, three months. Whether you go on tour or whatever, or you’re just not in the studio that much, but every time you go in there, you’re never able to have an ego. You are never able to think you own the place. Not just Chris – I mean, Chris will bring you down to earth – but it’s the records on the wall and you walk in and the piano that Coldplay recorded their first two albums on is sat there. You think, there’s been a lot better musicians and more successful musicians in this room than I am, so you’ve gotta pull your socks up and do your best.

As with any new band, you started off playing a number of small and independent venues and Liverpool is full of them! Are you concerned about the survival of any of your favourites through this pandemic?

Yeah, well there’s Liverpool’s Zanzibar, that’s gone. That’s a very central venue that’s in a very busy area: it’s prime real estate for someone to come and put apartments on it and stuff. It’s heart-breaking to see stuff like that go. Parr Street Studios is virtually all but gone now, there’s still people popping in and recording but that’s on limited time. It’s sad to see but I think it’s one of those, it’s too late in the day – COVID has only accelerated the problem, I think. It’s very hard for music venues and recording studios to pay the high rents in cities, that’s just as simple as it is. You can be as successful as Parr Street Studios and still struggle every month to pay the rent; whereas, if you’ve got a ten-story student accommodation on there that’s a bit easier. But, again, you’ve just gotta be optimistic you know. Its 2020, it’s the year of the optimist isn’t it, I suppose. The music venues and the recording studios and the music scene will find a way somewhere, whether it’s five miles down the road or whatever, there will still be little beautiful nuggets of creativity going on.

You are known for putting on a great live show – how desperate are you to get back to playing gigs to your fans? You have some tour dates supporting Circa Waves coming up next year, which is exciting!

Oh yeah! Yeah, exactly, that is the thing. We always thought that Instagram and Spotify and all that were like secondary to us. We think about it every day now because obviously the band are growing and growing, but in the early days, it’s always been jump in a van and go play a pub somewhere, or play a venue somewhere and meet people and try and get them to make a mosh pit and stuff like that. Because that’s not allowed anymore we sort of reassessed and were like ‘so is this it now? Is this what being in a bands about?’, sitting in your living room and doing a live stream for thirty-five people. It’s mad. Obviously, with the album coming out we want to see how people react to it, whether the people do actually like it.

You described your summer single, ‘Eleanor’ as a perfect love song to people struggling with mental health and have spoken openly about tackling the issue of toxic masculinity with ‘Ballerino’. Is it an intention of the band to musically address issues that remain rather unspoken about in society?

Yeah, I think that’s just art isn’t it. Yeah, I do. There’s a lot of themes in the new album that when you hear it, every song has got some sort of meaning and some sort of something that will resonate with someone, somewhere. Whether you’re a painter, or a movie-maker, or a musician, whatever it might be, you’ve gotta bring up them subjects and talk about things. Just from your own point of view as well, if you wanna make successful art, talk about topics that other people will wanna talk about or hear about. Have opinions on things, or at least have commentary on things that people are for a moment thinking or feeling.

You manage to do this in a really unintimidating, light-hearted way, creating upbeat tracks that make you just want to dance. How important is it to you that your message remains positive and optimistic?

Yeah, exactly, it’s very easy to fall into sort of preachy, you know, U2, Sting sort of. You come across a little bit annoying if you get a little bit preachy. It is that isn’t it, the art has got two like two poems: you’ve got to entertain but you’ve also got to inform, or educate, or provoke thoughts; as well as just entertain on the surface. It’s a hard balancing act to be honest. It’s very easy to just talk about romance for ten songs, it’s probably much easier, but you’d get bored of it.

But, having said that, it seems that you are particularly proud of slowing down the tempo in ‘Favourite Record’…

Yeah, it is. That was a conscious effort, we were always a hundred miles an hour, we always have been. Probably because the live shows have been such a thing for us, such a prominent priority. But, yeah, being able to take your foot off the gas for a second and talk about something, or just change the vibe. It’s challenging for us as well and interesting when it comes to that. When we go and play it live, when it gets to that moment, it’ll be like ‘oh, let’s see how this goes down’; whether people get bored and walk off to the toilet, or they’re actually engaging and thinking about it and enjoying it for what it is.

Do you personally have a favourite record on the album?

Yeah, I go through phases. At the minute it’s ‘Elevation’ because it’s only just come out and I think that’s my favourite because I sort of knew it was a boppy, catchy thing. ‘Girl is a Gun’: I like that just because it’s quite Kasabian and it feels bigger than a band. It does feel a bit like a soundtrack. And ‘Brando’, that’s quite a meaningful song. You said about taking your foot off the gas a little bit and talking about stuff that’s sincere. I’m happy the way that came out. I feel like to us, them three songs, they feel bigger than me. They feel bigger than a band, like anyone in the world would be happy to have them songs, or any film in the world would put them on. But I go through phases, I might fall out of love with one of them tomorrow.

You’ve played Glastonbury’s BBC Introducing Stage, sold out Liverpool’s O2 Academy, been nominated for an AIM Independent Music Award, is there anything else you have your sights on for 2021? 

All the same again. Glastonbury, bigger stage; bigger tour, bigger sell out tour; bigger Liverpool show. Just keep building. I’d like to hear ourselves on an advert and on television shows because I don’t think we’ve had that yet. Something like that, or perform on a live television show with Graham Norton, but that would be an issue for the stars.

The Hollow of Humdrum is OUT NOW.

Listen on Spotify / Apple Music / Amazon

Words and Interview: Lily Owen