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 the rakes session
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.I don't like Mondays. For anyone reading this at work, knackered, with a vicious hangover from caning it… The Rakes could be your favourite new band. Recorded with producer du jour Paul Epworth, their debut album, Capture/Release, kicks against the drudgery and absurdity of metropolitan life and alcoholic escapism - an entry-level admin position, wearing the same clothes three days running and smelling “like the smoking section in a Wetherspoon’s pub”. As singer Alan Donohoe has it in The Guilt, “If work only knew what I got up to at the weekend, they wouldn't speak to me.” Not that The Rakes are a rock version of The Office, but they do embody a very British trend of narrative, idiomatic songwriting that spans The Kinks, Blur and most recently The Streets. In The Rakes’ - and very possibly, your - world, girls “look well nice”, mates are “on” 22 grand and a hungover lunch is eaten early “to get some sugar in my blood”.  The band formed, at least partly, thanks to an appreciation of shared physique. During a soundcheck for their first headline tour (having graduated from Travelodge to sleeper bus), Guitarist Matthew notes, “We came up with the name first of all, because of being skinny.” As for the band’s real-life 22 grand jobs? “I worked in a warehouse. With our physiques you wouldn’t say I was suitable for lifting wardrobes and flatpack furniture. My physicality changed not in the slightest.” Wage slavery has been a theme of their singles from 22 Grand Job to Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep), but the flip side is the opportunity available in a large city… “London’s a very cosmopolitan place and there’s always the realisation that these things can be achieved. People I’ve spoken to have said, ‘Oh you’ve followed your dream,” but living in London it really does seem like a possibility.” And now that they’ve “made it” what next? Drummer Lasse vaguely offers, “Having a really good job. And getting pissed.”
James Cowdery
The Rakes – Capture/Release, released August 15 on V2 Records.
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 paul epworthfeature recent sessions  truck festivalsessions  bloc party, the kills,the cribssession  smogsession  yetisession  m. wardsession  the killssession  willy masonsession  kt tunstallsession  roots manuvasession  joanna newsomsession
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