Rat Boy have been storming through the music scene with their music, bringing a whole new take to the idea of genre-bending. On April 22 of this year, the band released their most recent track, ‘Suburbia Calling’, with an accompanying music video, which has been racking up streams at an immense speed. The new single came after Rat Boy’s The Mixtape EP, also released in April, which came with five tracks, including ‘Hanging Around’, ‘Sportswear’, and ‘Carry On’.
Live music has also been prominent in the world of Rat Boy, and has sent the band around the world, playing in countries like Japan and Spain. On June 13, Rat Boy will be heading to London to play their one-night-only show at The Lower Third.
On ‘Suburbia Calling’…
“So the song is probably over a year old now. Me and my friend, Sam, made it. It was after travelling to London and seeing the difference, and we thought it’d be a fun idea for a song. The influences are very much Britpop – I think I was listening to Blur on the train up. I know it’s quite easy to hear in the song, but I think it’s very Blur-inspired. The guy who produced the song produced Kaiser Chiefs and Blur – we really wanted to go for a classic sort-of Britpop sound. It was such a different process for us because we normally do a lot of electronic stuff in the production, and chopping stuff up. It was cool just to see a different approach to it.”
On the individuality of their albums…
“The first albums were like 17-22 years old, so you’re always discovering new music and wanting to try and explore different genres. It was experimenting with different music, I guess, and getting obsessed with a genre, and then putting it out, and not really thinking much about it. It probably confused a lot of people, when we made a load of punk stuff, and then tried to do hip-hop.”
“I think that, and then between touring as well, it was actually finding the time to come back right.”
On maintaining their creativity…
“I think when the lockdown happened, it sort-of threw everything off. We started a side project, called Lowlife, and then there was another sort-of demo of the third album for Rat Boy. It didn’t really sound like an album… it was all over the place. At the start of last year, I was like, ‘Let’s not focus on one genre, and try and make a record, where it sounds like all the tracks were made in a similar time frame.’ It was fun – it was a very different approach. The first album took like four years so it was actually quite a quick process this time. All the songs were written in a year.”
On their biggest challenges…
“Learning how to organise ourselves, I think. We’re learning that now. The tour stuff and planning for gigs, we had someone do it for us before, so now we’re doing it in a more DIY approach. I think that’s quite hard.”
On their favourite moments…
“Brixton was good.”
“That’s my favourite moment, actually.”
“Japan was really good, when we played Summer Sonic. We did the baseball stadium, and went out drinking in a club, which was really fun.
It’s the live stuff, isn’t it? It becomes a real thing when you play the songs that you make in the studio, and you don’t know how people are going to react. Then you do it live, and it sort-of surprises you. I think that’s a proud thing to do.”
On the highlights from their live music…
“We played the main stage at Reading once… that was really scary. We didn’t think anyone would turn up, but it was a really good set. That’s the scariest thing as well, though, playing a festival, especially in a different country, and not knowing if you’re going to be playing to no one, which we have done. We played in Spain once, and they hadn’t actually opened the festival doors yet, and we were on the main stage. There was literally not one person there and we had to play.”
On playing London…
“I’m really excited to play London. All our friends come to it, so it’s nice to play to people we know, as well as people we don’t. It’s nice to have new music to play, and actually have a reason to go on tour.”
On what’s coming soon…
“We have a new song out called ‘One In A Million’, which at the moment, is coming out on May 29. We did this song with a guy called Lil Aaron, which is fun, because he’s more of a rap artist, and we’re doing a sort-of ska song with him. It was fun to mix genres up.”
On genre mixing…
“In the van, we listen to so many different types of music. We don’t really listen to much indie music. We tried doing some rap stuff recently, and it was more of a challenge. I think because we grew up listening to different types of music, that’s what we understand the most, and what comes naturally to us, I guess.”
Tickets for Rat Boy’s London show on June 13 are out now, and available to buy here:
https://www.seetickets.com/tour/rat-boy
https://www.gigsandtours.com/event/rat-boy/the-lower-third-outernet/3008208
