The Rakes

The Rakes’ Ten New Messages is the brilliant second album from London’s most switched-on, keyed-up young band. It is, literally, ten new messages contained in ten new songs. It’s about communication and travel, about how we move through the modern world, ten concise blasts from the here and now, powerful enough to retain their relevance tomorrow and the day after.

Musically it is about The Rakes broadening their palette – the short-sharp-shock of their first album, 2005’s Capture/Release, giving way to longer, more developed, complicated songs. ‘We’ve not gone avant-garde or experimental or anything,’ the band say. ‘We’ve just got better at our jobs.’

As with The Rakes’ blistering debut, the new songs are as lean as the band themselves: Donohoe (vocals), Matthew Swinnerton (guitar), Jamie Hornsmith (bass), Lasse Petersen (drums). After a year and a half of touring on their first album, The Rakes came back with more perceptive eye, a greater understanding of what was going on around them in London. Half of Ten New Messages was recorded in Lincolnshire with producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian), half in London with Brendan Lynch (Primal Scream, Paul Weller). It’s testament to the strength of the songwriting, and the playing, that it sounds like one scorching whole.