CHOON

Red Light Company Talk Twitter, Geeks, and Eating Dingos

This eclectic bunch contains more diversity than any band that has touched the new music radar in the last few years. The five-piece have collated numerous comparisons with the likes of indie-rockers Editors and Montreal based quintet, Arcade Fire. To find out what the fuss is about, Katey Walker rushed down to Manchester to meet the band…

The Manchester Roadhouse is something of a venue; hidden down one of the city’s many side streets it’s a great place to watch a band of such calibre in a spectacularly intimate setting.

Raucous laughter from a small dressing room fills the Roadhouse, and with humus, grapes, and bottles of Gin at the ready, the band settle. Richard Frenneaux, lead vocalist, talks about their background, “I’m Richard, and we’re based down in London, although I was born in Australia and New Zealand. We got the band together end of 2006 down in London,” he begins.

“I put an advert on the internet looking for musicians to write with. Shawn replied from Wyoming, he did an audition and then we met Chris our keyboard player in a publishing office. Chris and James had been playing together for a while and then Paul came into the band but he was in a band previously called F.O Machete. Paul came down from Scotland to join us.”

Shawn Day (bass), James Griffiths (drums), Paul Mellon (guitar) and Chris Edmonds (keyboards) complete the line up of Red Light Company. Shawn’s love of music brought him halfway across the world in search of the perfect band to futher his career. Having such a culturally diverse mixture within the group must have had a significant impact on the shape of their sound, and Richard was quick to point out their musical influences;

“I think with me and Shaun, we had fairly similar musical reference points considering we lived on other sides of the world, which is weird but I guess it’s a sign of the times. We all agree on quite a lot of bands but there are differences, cultural differences which we all find within the band. But I think that’s good. It’s nice to have a melting pot, it’s more interesting than growing up and going to school together and making a band.”

“It keeps you on your toes!” adds Paul.

The band suddenly go off in a tangent talking about Scotsman Paul’s love of haggis, rarebit and all other exotic foods. It’s soon question time with Paul in the hot seat being fired questions by the other four band members about his culinary experiences and tastes. Richard asks, “Would you eat a Dingo?”

“I would, I would eat a Dingo. I’ve eaten springbok, kangaroo, shark, I’ve eat quite a lot of weird stuff! Zebraaaaa! I’ve eaten a Zebra! It’s quite leathery!,” Paul replies.

Reeling them back in, it’s time to find out what’s happening in London at the moment. Is there anyone out there to enthuse the music world this year?

“It’s the same as always really. I think London’s quite good because any time you want to go out and see a band it’s available to you. I think that’s a great thing for bands, especially if they’re just starting up. There’s not a huge amount that’s interesting in London at the moment though. I really like the new Maccabees single actually, it’s really good. That’s one thing that’s really exciting.”

Paul’s thoughts swayed towards a band which Red Light Company played alongside at the electric proms. Micachu, signed to Rough Trade Records are described as ‘complicated music containing a big fuzzy M.I.A esque beat’, they’re really weird, and as Paul said, “they were so individual just because they were so different.”

NME described Red Light Company as handing out a dose of ‘dark lyrical content hiding under glorious geekcore choruses’. The quintet are quick to dispute, with Paul taking the lead, “I don’t think any of us are geeks and I don’t really understand were this geekcore thing has come from. I don’t know what it is! That NME review baffled us to be honest.”

Richard’s only acclaim to being even slightly geeky is that he collected basketball cards as a kid, and Paul the same with football stickers. But then James, the bands Welsh drummer pipes up and admits that he is “good with computers,” and we collectively agree that that is a bit geeky!

Crafting a song is something that all writers do differently, and with Richard it’s not a set technique, it’s something that changes each time a new sound comes around:

“It depends. With a track like Lights Out it was written on an acoustic because I wanted all the focus to be on the lyrics with the track so that was a little different. I’ve got a little studio that we set up in Baker Street when we started making the album, we just kind of bounced sounds around. We make demo’s straight away and so we get an idea of how it’s going to sound, that’s kind of were the band came from very much. Not rehearsing in a room, we had a production sound that we wanted and we went from there I guess.”

Comparisons have been made, as with any band, but Red Light Company certainly have some names to live up to including that of Editors and Arcade Fire. Although, as Richard points out, any band will always be compared by default with the bands they tour with. They can see the comparisons with Editors due to the dark lyrical content, but with Arcade fire they all seem a little stumped, “I think with Editors, we’re compared with them maybe because the lyrics are a bit dark, and we toured with them as well. Arcade Fire, yeah well there’s four of us in the band that can sing and we like to use that. We are fans but I can’t hear it personally.”

The digital music revolution has spread like wildfire in the past few years. But is it a good or a bad thing for music in general?

“I think the good thing is that anyone can be noticed and you can put your music up and have just as much of an opportunity as anyone to be heard,” says Richard. “There’s also a bad side were everyone has a voice and I don’t know whether that’s a particularly good thing. With anything, there’s always pro’s and con’s. I just hope that the con’s don’t start out weighing the pro’s. The internet at the start, it was a brave new world and nowadays what has it turned into? It’s Twitter, blogs and stuff like that, it doesn’t interest me too much but it’s great to have a platform for your voice to be heard on.”

Look out for Red Light Company this summer. They’ll be playing as many festivals as possible and hope to tour Europe very soon. This band are talented, friendly and most all, have spark – that spark of passion that seems to be catapulting them into the lives of many music fans.

Interview By Katey Walker