All The Saboteurs wanted to do for their latest album Help Us Stranger (which has dropped today) was create a rock'n'roll album - and let's just say, they have certainly done just that.
“One thing that we kept talking about was making a rock’n’roll record,” shared drummer Patrick Keeler when speaking with The Music recently. “Rock’n’roll is getting harder to get people to listen to it, and it’s getting less and less like rock’n’roll. A lot of rock music exists more in this grey area, drawing from all genres. We didn’t want to do that. We were just like, ‘Let’s make a rock’n’roll record.’
“People talk about it like it’s a dying genre,” he continues. “It is, in a way: it’s hard to get something on the radio if it’s not recorded on a cell phone. Everything’s electronic, a lot of stuff is produced using the same gear, it all sounds a lot alike. There’s a lot of great stuff, but it’s hard to break through the culture as a rock’n’roll band... It’s just getting harder to find, especially on the radio. It’s no longer at the centre of culture. But it’s who we are.
"We all came up listening to and playing this kind of music. Rather than being like those artists who’ve gone with the trends, we just decided to play like how we all play. We’re two guys from Detroit and a couple guys from Cincinnati, and we like rock’n’roll."
Help Us Stranger is the third album from the group - which is made up of Keeler, Jack White and Brendan Benson on vocals and guitars, and Jack Lawrence on bass - was described as "poetically profound, melodically mad, [and] instrumentally ingenious" by The Music's reviewer Anna Rose and was awarded four stars.
Listen to Help Us Stranger below.
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