White Rabbits Interview

Interview with melodic New York indie-poppers White Rabbits for the Viceland.com Blog.

White Rabbits Interview - 26 / 06 / 07

Your music sounds like it should be from Montreal, but you are from New York. How did that happen!
That Hurts man! Yeah, we get the Arcade Fire comparison a lot. I’m guessing that is what you are getting at? They are a fine band, but I don’t think they came up once as an influence when we were making the record. They are one of those bands that sort of changed the field for bands like us.

You got an 8.1 on Pitchfork Media. How is the ‘pitchfork effect’ working out for you? Painful?
I guess in the states it helped out a lot, we were just about to go out on an unscheduled tour when the Mystery Jets had problems getting Visas. We were gonna go out on the road with them, but they couldn’t make it over to the States. That review helped us out a lot, we had a much bigger crowd and we sold a few records, well a lot of people stole our record! We don’t care about that so much.

Your name kinda sounds like you should be making incidental music for The Tweenies.
You know, choosing a name for a band is always such a painful and awkward thing…

Is it just a rip of that Jefferson Airplane song?
I think that was probably mentioned. We wanted to call ourselves ‘The Grateful Dead’ but it was already taken. I think we were after a non-intrusive name that doesn’t mean anything really. Although we just found out about the white rabbit superstition thing where you are supposed to say ‘White Rabbit’ three times on the first day of the month for good luck.

Really? I haven’t heard about that We usually do ‘Pinch, Punch, first of the month’ So how is the action on tour? Have you been fucking like….well y’know…
Action? Watching Wimbledon has been about as good as it gets for us. Saying that though, the television reception has been great!

So how have you found the UK so far?
Rainy, muddy and expensive

Is that how you would sum up the UK in three words?
Nah it would be ‘God bless America!’

Lets stay with three’s. What three things make White Rabbits the band they are today?
Steven King, Dr Dog and pints of beer.

Thanks