Dead Rabbits

Southampton, England based band Dead Rabbits have been regarded as one of the masters of the new era of psychedelic, with their latest album, 2016’s ‘Everything Is A Lie’ adding to their compiled works of distinction. You can find the five-piece at Poland’s SpaceFest!, a two day music festival dedicated to psych and shoegaze, December 1st-2nd.

How did the five of you find each other? You formed in 2011, what was the first couple of years like for you prior to the release of your ‘The Ticket That Exploded’ LP?

Tom: Me and our guitarist Neil were already writing and recording songs together before we formed the band. We were already friends with the keys and bass player, Paul and Colin, getting them involved was easy. We put out an advert for a drummer and Suzanne got in touch, we’ve been friends ever since.

The artwork for your albums, including your latest ‘Everything Is A Lie’ are gorgeous. How do you go about working with the artists?

Tom: We’ve been really fortunate when it comes to the artwork for our albums. Olya Dyer is a great artist. She’s worked on a lot of stuff for Fuzz Club Records before. She did the artwork for our first and third album and her ideas worked perfectly.

‘Get Me Over There’ I simply adore. The lyrics, the instrumentation, everything. How did this song come together?

Tom: This song started out as a jam we played whilst we were rehearsing. It all came together really quickly, I improvised the lyrics and within a few minutes it was there, we had the song.

Where do you draw your lyrics from?

Tom: A lot of the lyrics are completely improvised at first; I’ll keep going with it until they feel right. They normally always relate to whatever is going on in my life at that time.

What’s your relationship with Fuzz Club Records like? How did the collaboration come about?

Tom: Casper who founded Fuzz Club, came to one of our gigs in London. After the show he asked us if we’d like to contribute a song to their compilation ‘The Reverb Conspiracy’, we obliged. Soon after that we were asked if we wanted to release our first album with them. Our relationship stemmed from there.

I can see from your social media that you include Joy Division, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Velvet Underground, and My Bloody Valentine among your many influences. Who’s a guilty pleasure that in a quirky way influences your music? Someone like Britney Spears or Minnie Riperton?

Tom: I’m not sure about a guilty pleasure, if I like something, it doesn’t matter who made it. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I feel like I have more than one way of listening to music, listening for pleasure and listening to learn. There’s always something to be learnt even if it’s a really bad song. There are really good parts and production techniques used on thousands of terrible songs. I’m not sure if the rest of band has anything they’d be slightly embarrassed to share, I do know Suze has soft spot for Abba.