Exclusive Acoustic Session: Reachback Perform 'Saviour' And 'No Place Like Home'
Here at OnePopz, we love Reachback so we were delighted to welcome Ruby and Tom from the band in for an acoustic session last weekend!
The pair sounded amazing together and they performed 'Saviour' and 'No Place Like Home'; the two current singles from their debut album 'Adventureland'. Unfortunately, group members Craig and Joe weren't present for the session but Ruby's incredible voice filled the 80 Hertz studio whilst Tom rocked out on his acoustic guitar.With musical influences ranging from Mariah Carey to All Time Low, Reachback are a powerful pop/rock rand with catchy upbeat tracks. They're from Essex and are definitely one of the UK's most talented groups.
As well as singing for us, the duo answered many of our questions in an exclusive interview. You can read some quotes relating to the singles and watch Ruby and Tom's awesome live performances below.
How do you go about picking singles from the album?
Ruby: "I think that’s one of the hardest things because you have like favourites on the album; I definitely have my favourites. It is hard because you’ve got to pick something that you think everybody else will like, its not about what we like. So I think it is a difficult thing to do actually and I prefer it if an outsider will pick it for us because it’s easier and then we won’t be like ‘oh but this song, we like this song a little bit more’."
Tom: "It’s kind of like an outside opinion. That’s kind of how we picked ‘No Place Like Home’, a lot of people told us that was their favourite song. We chose ‘Saviour’ as the first single; that was kind of our favourite. But ‘No Place Like Home’; the album came out and we just kind of got feedback from it and that’s how we decided really."
And you just recently shot the music video for your latest track 'No Place Like Home', how was that?
Ruby: “That was good fun, we actually used our friend’s forest. We found out at the end of filming that we weren’t actually supposed to use it but it was good fun while it lasted.”
Tom: "Yeah, we got into a bit of trouble there with the forest warden who was apparently coming to kick us out."
Ruby: "But I can understand; we were like firing smoke bombs and all sorts in there. We had a dog running around and then we got told there was like baby deers and stuff so then I was getting concerned that we’d hurt baby deers from all the smoke and stuff. But I think it was fine, no animals were harmed during the video."
The music video for 'Saviour' was filmed in a comic book store, how did you find that?
Ruby: "That was good fun because obviously we’re all big fans of comics and like Marvel and stuff. So half the time, when we first got to the comic book store, we just wanted to nose around and just find every comic."
Tom: "I think we spent about an hour going around just looking around and reading a couple of comics but then we were like ‘No, we’ve got to do a music video here guys. We need to get through this.’"
Ruby: “The first part of the video was probably horrible because we were stuck on Brighton Pier and it was freezing and we were right by the front of it. I was in like some little skirt and a crop top so I was literally freezing but it was good fun apart from the icicles falling from me."
Tom: "I think your (Ruby's) lips actually turned blue by the end of it. You probably won’t see that in the video but it was the coldest day ever."
You also released an EP titled ‘Wake Up’ back in 2011, how would you say your sound has changed since then?
Tom: "I guess we’ve all kind of grown up. I like to think we’ve sharpened our sound a bit more and that our writing’s got better. I think the new album sounds a lot more polished which is good but we still love the EP and we still listen to it and play the tracks from it. It’s still really fun to play, I’m happy that tracks we wrote so long ago are still really fun to play."
Ruby: "We were all kind of like 17 or 18 when we wrote that. I think as well like for any band out there, they’ll understand this as well, it takes ages for a band to actually find their sound and find what kind of music they feel happy and comfortable with and enjoy playing. I think this album really shows that for us and we’ve found our sound now; the music we want to play and enjoy doing it."
Tom: "Also, I think we want to kind of experiment with it a lot more. That’s kind of really exciting for us; to now look forward to the future and maybe like doing the next album. Now we’ve found our sound, just kind of experimenting and adding new sound into that. I think we’re all excited about the future."
You can download a copy of Reachback's brilliant first album 'Adventureland' here on iTunes and we can guarantee you won't be disappointed. If there's a third single from the record, we're keeping our fingers crossed that it'll be 'Take My Hand'. The track's chorus is infectiously catchy and it never fails to make us smile.
