Found in translation
Ilana Kronick
|
The White Rabbits: Not afraid of commitment
|
Brooklyn's White Rabbits peel off the labels and find their sound underneath
They used to play "honky tonk calypso," and if you listen closely, they still do. It was a style they once forged deliberately, but lately Brooklyn's White Rabbits (originally from Columbia, Missouri) have been looking to move away from their distinctive sound.
"We wanted to obscure a lot of the music tags that we got for the first record," says Stephen Patterson, who leads on vocals and piano. "We wanted to do something more based on our own interpretation of those things as opposed to a direct, verbatim influence of calypso and Caribbean music."
What comes through is a style that still weighs heavily on rhythmic structures (two drummers work that up while two guitars, a bass and piano fill it in) but leans on classic models of rock - sure-footed, earnest and boyish.
"There is a lot of rock music that I hear these days that sounds very non-committal," he says. "We just wanted to put ourselves out there entirely. The idea was to not mask it with effects and reverb."
They met their goal with the help of Spoon's Britt Daniel, whose signature straight-up finish can be detected all over the brawny and sincere It's Frightening.
"We didn't want to hide behind anything," he says. "Particularly with my vocals, I feel that if it's going
to be rough around the edges then we should fully embrace that and hope that the six personalities will shine through."
White Rabbits
w/ Glass Ghost and Suckers
At Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent), Oct. 23
