Melbourne’s Run Rabbit Run share five songs for inspiration, opening up on the Bloodline EP

The debut EP from Melbourne folk rockers Run Rabbit Run recently landed in the form of Bloodline, an ambitiously majestic presentation of music from a band who’ve been making decent waves for themselves on the live front through 2017. The influences are easy to draw; there’s some Fleet Foxes here, Of Monsters and Men there. As songwriter Casey Martin comments, Bloodline sees Run Rabbit Run play with musical expression and introduce the band as one to be aware of heading into the New Year.

How would you say Bloodline is representative of the band you are today and the direction the band hopes to head in?

The EP definitely shows a broader spectrum of what we sound like as a band. Having two lead vocalists/songwriters means our sound is pretty diverse. I think the EP shows that really well whilst still feeling like a cohesive release, rather than just a collection of songs.

I’m glad we got to show our more progressive side a bit with songs like “Lights”. We haven’t really been able to show that in our previous single releases because those songs are all quite long. I think we’re all pretty keen to just stretch ourselves a bit more stylistically in the future. We’ve got some darker sounding songs, and a few more upbeat ones. I think we’re just happy going wherever feels the most natural at the time.

How has 2017 treated you as a musical unit? 

Fantastically! We’re feeling tighter than we’ve ever felt. There was a big period where our drummer was overseas, so we had a (fantastic) fill in drummer for a long while. Despite being a bit of challenge for the band at first, it definitely gave us a great opportunity to reassess our music and I think having some new blood in the band for a while really helped us stretch our own musicianship a bit.

We did our first tour back in February for our single release, which was a really great experience. I don’t think we’d ever spent that much time together before, and it was a lot of fun. We very recently had Doug join us on bass as well, which has been brilliant. Releasing Bloodline has been a pretty stressful but also really rewarding experience overall I think. It definitely gave us a real yearning to record more as soon as possible.

Would you say that your creative process in making music has changed any as a result of making Bloodline?

Without a doubt. When we went into the studio to record the EP we thought we had everything fleshed out and ready to go. We ended up adapting a lot of parts to sit right with other instruments. Our producer Aaron Dobos had us adding so many great ambient layers throughout the EP, and it gave us a much better understanding of what we can do with songs to bring them to life in studio. It’s helped us to bring some new elements to our live show as well, and I think the things we learnt while recording will definitely be on our minds when we start work on our next EP.

Was there anything you were listening to or watching (any art form) that influenced your writing of this record?

All the songs on the EP were written across a number of years, so the influences were all pretty widespread. For myself, the songs I wrote came about through life experiences; learning about myself, and what I believe in. This EP, for the most part, is a collection of songs about personal growth, and conquering some life challenges both myself and our other lead vocalist Michael have faced in recent years. It wasn’t planned that way intentionally, we kind of realised that the songs were all pretty thematically related AFTER we decided they’d be on the EP.

In terms of recording the album, we were really influenced by bands like Noah and The Whale, and The Middle East. Their albums have this fantastic feeling of completeness; songs seem to trickle into each other. We wanted our EP to feel like a bit of a journey, something people want to listen to from start to finish rather than just picking out favourites.

How do you anticipate 2018 in terms of live shows and bringing more newcomers into the Run Rabbit Run fold?

2017 was such a great year for us in terms of personal accomplishments. Our music has reached so many new ears and the feedback we’ve received has been incredible, and means the world to us. I think we’re just really keen to get some more music out. We’re all definitely excited to play more interstate shows, and hopefully get onto some festival line-ups later in the year if all goes well.

Bloodline is out now. Follow Run Rabbit Run here.

RUN RABBIT RUN TOUR DATES

October 19th | The Gasometer Hotel, MELBOURNE
November 12th | World Vegan Day Festival, MELBOURNE
November 25th | Captain Cook Hotel, SYDNEY

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