THE RILLS: SOCIAL MEDIA, STRANGERS AND SUPPLANTING INDIE
INTERVIEW | MITCH SPENCER – THE RILLS by Gracie Erskine
‘Indie, it’s like a flavour’
Mitch Spencer (The Rills)
With a UK tour imminent, a Top 20 debut under their belt and an engine full of fun, Gracie Erskine spoke to frontman, Mitch Spencer, of indie hotcakes The Rills about ‘Don’t Be A Stranger’ and the upcoming dates.
Gracie: ‘Don’t Be A Stranger’ has been out 3 months now. You’ve got a top 20 album that you’re about to go on tour. How are you feeling about it?
Mitch: Great. I mean, like, it’s a lot of these songs we sat on for what felt like kind of forever. Actually getting them out has just been really special, even if a lot of the super fans knew most of them already.
Gracie: You have got a lot of super fans. You seem to have quite a cult following.
Mitch: That’s kind of like, what comes, because we kind of blew up originally on TikTok and social media. It’s been our kind of path really into the music industry. And, I think that comes with a real hardcore centre in our fan base.
Gracie: You’re kind of a prime example of a social media band. Do you think it always has a positive affect, or do you think it distorts artist from artistry?
Mitch: Honestly, no. It’s a very difficult, very precarious place to be as an artist. There is a very fine line between content creator and artist. When you put yourself out on social media, it’s like having a gash on your arm, and you you’ve just dipped it into a pool of piranhas. We first started with the social media thing, and it was going really well, labels interested and shopping things around. And I remember somebody messaged me saying ‘What tunes have you got?’ And I was like, fuck. Nothing.
Which is terrible. It’s terrible because, that’s not what I’ve started it for.
I had to really ask myself, ‘Who are you? Are you gonna be this indie influencer guy? Or are or are you gonna commit to your art?’
Gracie: After having to get over being a ‘tik tok’ band, does now having your album out and the tour ahead make it feel more of a certification of your ability?
Mitch: Yeah. 100%. The album itself feels like the album that we always, always wanted to make. It sounds so ridiculous, but you know that that one line in Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino (Arctic Monkeys: Star Treatment) ‘I just wanted to be one of The Strokes’. We just wanted to be one of those indie bands in the early 2000’s.
So then when we were first writing the album we had this preconception of trying to make obviously indie tracks. But now we’ve gone through loads of stages with it, gotten a little bit more poppy, and then we started to kind of let go a bit more. And now the album really does feel like who we are right now.
In terms of the creative direction as well the art of it all, you know, the theme that we’ve really feels like it really resonates with our story and how we’ve got here. We feel like it’s been like some kind of fucking Formula 1 race.
Gracie: As much as it’s an eclectic and dynamic album, it is rooted at an indie core. It feels like you’ve brought your 2000’s influences and stuff it feels like you’ve brought into the modern day.
Mitch: Like the NME Awards 2005 pulled out of a time capsule.
Gracie: You’re one of the new faces to ambassador indie music, but where do you see the future of the scene going?
Mitch: It’s a tricky one. I think genres are becoming more microscopic. They’re just becoming more niche. I think it’s supplanting itself kind of everywhere a little bit. It’s not so much about the characteristics of the genre of music anymore. It’s more about the idea. Like when Brat (Charli XCX, 2024) came out. That’s a pop record. That’s a club record. But the ethos of it is like indie. It doesn’t sound like it it’s indie; but it feels like it’s indie to me. It’s in the sort of general ether now. Indie, it’s like a flavour..
Gracie: If music genres are becoming more and more niche, what would you say is The Rills micro niche?
Mitch: We are definitely like an indie band from the early 2000’s for now. Because that’s what we grew up on.
I still now listen to early FIFA playlists. I’ll just listen to thief FIFA 2003 playlist, and it’s like all of the noughties indie stuff. So I do feel like our kind of niche is people discovering these indie bands and kinda going- I wish I was part of that. And, that’s kinda what we are doing, but I don’t think it’s where we’re going.
Gracie: So with how much you love Arctic Monkeys is there a genre change coming ?
Mitch: I don’t think we’ll do a space hotel. I don’t think we’re we’re glamorous enough for that.
It would it would more be like a fucking motel in Leeds.
But we will be going somewhere new. I remember when we were in the studio, one of the last songs we worked, on was a song called Sirens. And the producer we were working with, basically went ‘I’m just gonna fuck about this, everybody go out for a bit’. And, we came back after a couple of hours, and he’d ran the whole song through this weird synth pad. And, I’ve got, like, I’ve got the sound. And I think all of us kind of looked at each other like, what the fuck is that, we love it.
Gracie: Are these new sounds that we’re gonna hear in the live shows?
Mitch: We’ve really tried to incorporate those elements into our live shows now. We wanna take the live show to the next level.
You know, we don’t want it to just be like we don’t want people to, like, turn up. For a long time, we used to play shows with loads of energy. We wanted people to go in and go, wow. That was one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. Now we want people to come to shows and go, well, that was a fucking show.
But I think with the more electronic sounds, that’s definitely where we’re gonna be going in future. It’s not like we’re going, Daft Punk or anything.
Gracie: Are we going to get to hear some of the new songs on the tour?
Oh, God. No. There’s nothing anywhere near ready for that, but we are always writing and always trying to stay on top of it and and keep evolving all the time. There’s no rest for the wicked in this game.
Gracie: So what is the song you’re most excited to take out on the road?
Mitch: Drive, I think. Yeah. It’s so much fun to do. For a long time, we were really talking about starting the album with that. That’s maybe one thing one thing I wish we did now.
Gracie: If you were to sum up in 3 words what we can expect from the tour, what would they be?
Mitch: I would guess. Heads blown off.
The Rills are gearing up to head on a UK tour commencing 13th February in Birmingham, if you’ve still got enough ignition left, tickets can be found here: https://www.seetickets.com/search?q=the+rills
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