The solid and anthemic sound rumbling through Red Light Company’s album, ‘Fine Fascination’, is an accomplishment. Not because it heralds their addition with White Lies to the ‘must have’ predictions for 2009, but because this work unifies a five piece from such obscure beginnings who nearly missed their chance. Commitment to the plan, a period of incubation in the studio at lead singer Frennaux’s house and the guidance of Adrian Bushby (big sound producer-extraordinaire) have quickly propelled these guys to potential glory. I caught up with Richard Frennaux to discuss the pitfalls of immigration and the fascination of pubescent nudity:
I’ve read that you met your bassist, Shawn Day, after some long distance communication on the Internet?
Yeah, the whole thing started when I left an advert on a UK website looking for a musician to collaborate with. Shawn replied from Wyoming [the least populated state in the US] of all places! It was a real surprise to me but to be honest what I was looking for at that time was some commitment from somebody, you know, whether it be from somebody coming over from a different country or anything like that. So I spoke to him and got him to fly over, which he did, and then I waited at the airport for him to be let out which happened (eventually!) once the immigration people were OK with it. Unfortunately once we started talking it emerged that he didn’t have enough funds to stay, and that he was booked on the next flight back to the States. We still got enough chance to get talking though; I took him to a British pub, as he’d never been to the UK before, and got into it realising that we were on the same page despite the fact that we were from such different backgrounds. 3 weeks later, once he had the money to move back, he came over permanently.
That was something I wanted to get into, the dynamic of the group considering the mix of nationality and different backgrounds…
Yeah we’re like the UN of bands!
Yeah!? How does this play out in terms of influence on the music? Was it a common interest that brought you together or did the differences cause problems?
Really the most important thing for me, as I said with Shawn, was the commitment thing you know? I mean it’s really important that people have that hunger to do that ‘one thing’. It doesn’t really matter to some degree if it is a five-piece band as long as someone is driving the ship in the right direction. You know, as long as people are reasonably on the same page, musically, then I think it’s going to work as long as they are committed and they have passion for the music you are making.
It was really the same story with Chris [Edmonds - keyboards] ‘cause he was never really a keyboard player, he specifically learned to join this band, he learned all the parts in a couple of weeks having never really taken the keyboard seriously. There are lots of examples of that in the band and it’s the kind of stuff that I think interests me. You know, in this day and age a lot of bands don’t ‘go to school together and make music and all of a sudden it’s happened for them’, for us its been a staggered process of deportations and getting people to learn instruments! It’s kind of different and it suits us well.
When you say ‘different’ as being something you’re interested in, how do you respond when critics continue to make regular comparisons, you know, with Arcade Fire, U2, Editors and White Lies? Does this create pressure?
Its always interesting to hear other people’s take on the music that we’re making, you know? Sometimes as an artist you become really un-subjective to what you’re making I guess, so I find it interesting when people compare us. I think the current artists, or bands like White Lies, happens because there is a lot of electro music out there right now and there’s not a huge amount of bands making guitar based music in the current climate. I think they are one of these 80’s influenced bands, as we are to a certain degree, so there is always going to be a comparison. But I think with us it’s a bit different as there’s not just an 80’s thing going on, I think there’s also a breadth of material we’re doing where I can see the comparisons with Arcade Fire and early U2, and its interesting to see that other people are saying so.
Staying on these similarities with U2 and Arcade Fire then, I wondered how much of that was encouraged by your producer Adrian Bushby, someone so connected to the ‘anthemic’ side of music? Is that something he’s influenced in you?
Kind of. With us when we first went in to make the record, we demoed it in my flat where I’d produced all of it. So I already had these big sounding tunes anyway because that’s the type of way I produce. Then we took it in with Adrian for a co-production, so, I had these ideas about guitar sounds and keyboard sounds that I liked to maintain, and he just took what we were doing and kind of made it even bigger. He’s great, you know, at shaping out a certain degree of our sound on our record, but at the same time we had that ourselves and we just wanted somebody to record it properly. It was really easy and it was great because a lot of the time we’ve had experiences with producers before that want to take what you have and make it their own. I find that quite scary prospect, being somewhat a producer myself; something I think has a lot to do with the sound of this band. I like to have control over that and he was just great at not having too much ego and being able to hear the music for what it is.
Talking about the release of this album, at a time of year when everyone is making predictions of who will be big, what is the impact when you see your name on NME and HMV lists?
It’s nice to get the recognition for what you’re doing and I feel like we deserve it! There are lots of lists, and I don’t really know how far to believe them as far as top ten hits for next year, but I still like to see the recognition. Its good for people to be turned on to what’s going on, as I know that people pay lots of attention to these type of things, so if it gets people into the new music that they haven’t heard of before that’s great.
On the new music, and more directly the album title ‘Fine Fascination’, is there any explanation for that?
‘Fine Fascination’ was a track, actually, that was released, or will be released as a B-Side, basically, and I just thought that the title was really appropriate for the record we were making. Initially when I started writing the material, a lot of it was influenced by the film ‘Christian F’, which was an 80’s Berlin Bowie cameo film concentrating on the darker side of life, a lot the record has echoes of that in it. I felt like there was this fascination with this darker side of life that I was trying to explore, especially in the earlier times of writing, hence the reason behind the title.
Is this type of fascination in the darker elements something that justifies the decision to put topless teenagers on the cover of the album?
I think so, yes. With us, it’s about making sure that every avenue that we’re trying to express and explore, art wise as well as music, is reflected. Its important to maintain some kind of consistency, so we found this artist (toyne?) and she was making these images that, when you listen to the music, just worked. It was just a running idea, we started off with one single, it went on to another one, and then all of the artwork came together like that. It was just about giving her some space to take some images and choosing things that were appropriate.
Lastly, for my own fascination, the ‘Arts and Crafts’ music video with the Marylyn Monroe lookalikes, how was that?
It’s interesting because its one of those things where, as a young band, you have to do a performance video pretty much with every video, so it was all about taking that motif that goes around with it repeatedly and it works out well. Its got this idiosyncratic element where this slightly unhinged aspect of the Marylyn performance is suitable to the track you know, and of course I’m happy with it.
‘Fine Fascination’ and ‘Arts and Crafts’ are out now
JP Watson
