The English Rain is a Brisbane based band, co-founded by Steve Boom and Neil Steward. Influenced by bands like The Beatles, The Jam and Tom Petty, the band follow up from singles ‘Before The Dark’ and ‘My Town’ with the uplifting ‘She’s A Rainbow’ reminiscent of The DMA’s and The Shins.
The band explains “the goal has always been to try to write songs with strong melodies and hooks and we love jangly guitar driven pop songs”, and the new single has hit the mark.
Named after a combination of things including Steve’s favourite Beatles song, and that the rain in England could be both depressing and joyous, the band acknowledge the same comparison can be made between the songs in their enormous catalogue which fans will be excited to hear a portion of on their forthcoming debut album Echoes of You due later in the year.
Produced and mixed by Jason Millhouse (Sean Sennett, 8 Ball Aitken), the band explains that while having the luxury of a catalogue over 140 songs, the tracklisting for the album was still settled quite easily. Following the release of ‘My Town’, Steve was approached by a number of songwriters allowing for a collaborative recording process. The band explain, “The idea was to invite people we respected and were fans of, to form a collective that could evolve and morph depending on the song”. Alister Bell of Speedstar provides vocals on the track, while Jason Millhouse also contributed on multiple instruments.
Not only writing indie guitar pop songs, The English Rain play a variety of other styles including alt country, rock and electronica. Steve explains how ‘She’s A Rainbow’ came about.
“I was approached by a friend who said she wanted to write a song. She had the title and a single line. When she told me the title I was a little deflated as I had never liked the Stones track of the same name. However, the line she had was ‘she’s a walking, talking disco ball’, which I thought was fantastic. It immediately struck me that she in fact could be perfectly described by this line herself. This was great as now I had a real person that I knew that I could base the song around. I think all of the best songs come from our life experiences and people we know. I wrote the rest of the song really quickly, in a couple of hours and then the bridge the next day.”
Ultimately, the band wishes to write songs which speak for themselves. The brand new single is out on July 30th!