An earlier version of this feature originally appeared in British music magazine Playmusic.
The Rakes haven't come to save rock 'n' roll. They're not going to out-debauch Pete Doherty. And they're not going to revolutionise the very concept of chord progressions. What they will do however, is soundtrack 21st century life for a small but significant chunk of British youth. And they'll also wipe the floor with any competition foolish enough to claim to be Britain's skinniest band.
"I'm a vegan so on the road I don't eat what the crew eat," insists pencil-thin singer Alan Donohoe as he tucks into a pint and a bag of Ready Salted in a quiet Chalk Farm boozer. "I'm getting a slight paunch. It's so annoying. I'm a member of a gym but I've never got time to go. I've used it once in the last two months. I went there to take a shower then went home again."
What the Rakes lack in muscle power, they more than make up in intellect. A+ students even among 2005's class of art school rockers, the band's self-titled debut album packs more than a knowing wink at the darker side of youth culture. Alongside the pumping bass of Jamie Hornsmith (who's due to join us today but is running late), the frantic drumming of native Dane Lasse Petersen and the clipped guitar of Matthew Swinnerton, Alan's lyrical prowess has set the Rakes at least 10 steps ahead of the chasing pack.
"I'd never written in a band before," confesses Alan, "although I was good at English in school. I'd gone to see bands, though, and I knew what irritated and annoyed me. I found that if you give a skinny white kid a guitar he'd start whinging and doing big chords like, 'I'm a big man now'. It'd either be grunge or some derivative Radiohead thing. It's really easy to tap into that kind of emotion. It sounded so annoying and pretentious."
The solution, and the advice that any creative writing teacher worth their salary would tell you, is to write about what you know. The beauty of true love? Macro-politics? The intricacies of the high performance internal combustion engine? Forget all about that. The Rakes sing about their lives: going to work, the occasional fling, and loads and loads of messy nights out. It's these nights, recognisable to anyone who ever popped out for "a quick half" just before dinner and returned at three am covered in vomit and/or chilli sauce, are perfectly documented on tracks like "Retreat", "The Guilt", "Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep)" and the quintessential Rakes track, "22 Grand Job".
"I thought of the chorus, which is just one line repeated over and over, walking down the street after a job interview, which I didn't get," smiles Alan between sips of lager. "I went to the studio that night and was like, 'Check out this'. After we worked it out I definitely had the first verse. But then we were trying to work on the second verse and Matthew came along with something that was a bit like what I was finding annoying about bands. Matthew had been in a few bands before and it was a bit like, 'When you get a guitar, this is how you write'. So the lyrics were something like 'Friday comes, it's ok, work's shit, I hate my boss'. Something along those lines. I was like, 'No! No! No! I'll do better than that. So I was like, 'Down to Old Street Thursday night'. Then we had a conversation within the band because no one knows about Old Street, which is the area in London people go to after the office. I said that it doesn't really matter that only a small group of people might get it. Instead of going for Matthew's 'I don't want to be a lackey in a job today' thing, we did something that not everyone's going to get. It was writing honestly. So when people liked that song it was a bit of a surprise."
This is what makes the Rakes the perfect documenters of London life in 2005, the slightly wealthier guitar-owning flip sides to the Streets' grimy urban tales. They're not celebrating the joy of weekend-long benders, but they're not condemning it either. If you listen between the lines, you can almost hear the hints that Alan wouldn't be too averse to interrupting the rock 'n' roll lifestyle with the occasional mug of Ovaltine and game of chess.
"We're not really into our image and the whole rock 'n' roll thing," he promises. "I'm sure someone like Pete Doherty is really into it. A song like "Retreat" [which has lyrics like, 'Might as well go out for the fifth night in a row'], I didn't make it as a deep song but it's sentiment that's quite common.
"The first tour we did, I was getting so caned every night I was going mad. I was still working my day job, too. It's easier to go out caning it when you're working. You can go home and go to the kitchen and get a cup of tea and them fall into your bedroom. If you're on tour you cane it all night, get driven to a Travel Lodge, get woken up, and don't have time for a shower. It's like you never get time to recuperate.
"Sometimes I have said no. After a couple of tours I started calming down a bit. I think the band has, too. Lasse's still up for it, but he's a drummer. He's like one of the crew. Us musician singer types have calmed down. We were playing in Liverpool one night and I actually disappeared early to the bus. The next day everyone was asking where I went to and if I pulled someone. I had to confess that I was on the tour bus reading my Bill Bryson book and listening to Coldplay. I was like, 'Aaaah! Let's start drinking! Now!'"
It's at this point that bassist Jamie Hornsmith turns up. Immediately confounding their boozy reputation by ordering a coffee from the bar, Alan insists on giving his bandmate a blow-by-blow account of what we've discussed in his absence. Maybe it's the presence of a non-alcoholic beverage, but Alan's not yet ready to leave the topic of drink alone.
"Personally, a lot of the things I've written come from me getting creative when I'm boozing," he laughs. "I'll think of a line and write in down on my mobile. I know the guy from Maximo Park has a poetry book he writes stuff down in, but if you're in a Weatherspoon's pub in Wembley you don't really want to get your book of poetry out. Jot stuff down on your mobile. I've got a little folder called My Lyrics. That way you always keep it fresh. Although with predictive text if you type "Alan" in, it normally says "Anal". Often ideas would come when I was at work feeling rough from the night before, and you can't really get your book of poetry out there. I would always have a word document open on the sly next to whatever I was supposed to be doing. That's how '22 Grand Job' was written."
"If you haven't got a pen or a mobile phone or a computer," adds Jamie, "just get it tattooed on your arm. Like that fellow in Memento."
If it seems weird hearing creative tips from a band that initially got together as a bit of laugh, that's because it is. After coming up with a name that reflected their slight builds, the gradual realization that they actually knew how to play led to a demo to get some gigs, where they surprised everybody that knew them by turning out to be pretty good. When the self-titled album arrives this August, it'll be the culmination of two years' writing, recording, and playing everywhere that would have them. Alan and Jamie can barely disguise their excitement for its arrival, even though some of their cheekier fans have already secured a copy.
"I can't wait to see what the response will be," beams Alan. "On a lot of the songs we've tried to be honest rather than skinny white indie kids making another record. But it's already on the net. When we were in Italy a guy came up to us and said that he had to download our album off the net because it would never be available there. And I was like, 'You can't get it in England. It hasn't been released yet'. He said, 'Oh, well, can you sign the CD anyway?'"
This autumn, when people return from their holidays and get back into the endless cycle of football seasons and old drinking habits, is the moment where everything the Rakes sing about will start making perfect sense. They speak for everyone who's ever had two too many, hasn't rebelled against the nine-to-five or woken up with an unfamiliar partner. And that's a lot more people than even they realize.
"I saw an interview with Amir Khan, the boxer, and he said that he can't walk down the street any more because he keeps getting stopped for autographs," beams Alan. "We get that sometimes when we're in indie clubs, but it doesn't change you at all. I just laugh at it. It wasn't long ago where we were playing Brixton Academy supporting Kasabian and Goldie Lookin' Chain, and then the next day I went into the office for nine o'clock. It's still a bit surreal."
"I'm going to go through my phone book on my mobile deleting everyone who's not a fashion designer, a musician or a politician," grins Jamie mischievously. "And our next album's going to be a massive comedown. We're going to record it in Devon with Dido."
