Artist Interview: Krooked Tongue

The latest artist interview is with Krooked Tongue, the grungy alt-rock trio going from strength-to-strength. After spending the last year defining their sound, they have highlighted themselves as one of the biggest emerging bands in the UK Music and Bristol indie scene. After graduating from BIMM Bristol, and having won BIMM Live in June, the band didn’t lose momentum and ploughed through a headline tour in mid-November. Since then, they’ve spent 2019 honing their craft and expanding their insanely dedicated fan base.

Formed in 2017, lead vocalist and bassist Oli Rainsford, drummer Harry Pritchard, and guitarist Dan Smith released their debut single, I Wanna Steal Your Car, in early November. This built upon their initial success by scoring 30k streams and created a significant national buzz which attracted the attention of BBC Introducing presenter, Alex Noble. Vibrant tracks, Swarm and Girls with Knives spark an infectious live energy, with a (borderline) dangerous stage presence. Noble said the band were “known for their powerful combination of heavy riffs and melodic hooks”.

In early December, I had the pleasure of grabbing a drink with Oli and Harry and got the chance to pry into the past, present and future of the band.

So, Krooked Tongue, what’s the story behind the name?

Oli: I don’t actually remember, the name just came out of thin air like a meteor shower from the gods. We found out there’s a clothing brand with pretty much the same name – they spell it with a ‘C’ and ‘S’ on the end.

Harry: We originally spelt it (Krooked Tongue) with a ‘C’ and then we found out about the brand and changed it to a ‘K’. If you look on our very first Instagram post it’s still a ‘C’… when we were a four-piece.

Was the four-piece under the same name?

H: (laughs) No, we had Can’t Control The Vandals.
O: Which was a quote graffitied by some pisshead in The Canteen.
H: That was too long ago…
O: Yeah back in the day, when we were shite!

How would you describe your sound now?

H: Really, really good.
O: Yeah probably the best band ever. Too much?
H: Too much.
O: Genre-wise, underground rock.

You’ve just come back from a headline tour! How was that?

O: Class, like, really cool.
H: Never done anything like it before, it was really fun. It was a nice amount of time too – a week with one day’s rest in the middle. It was just so fun. We supported Sœur in Cardiff just after which was amazing too.
O: Every show had a really good crowd.

Who had the best crowd?

O: Birmingham had probably the tamest crowd, but biggest crowd and in the biggest venue. The other three were mental, bodies flying everywhere.
H: Clunk treated us really well in Falmouth – got us free booze, free photographer and were just super friendly.
O: Liverpool was really cool too, we had people jumping on and off stage.
H: Yeah people would jump on and mosh with us – we love it when people do that!

Following the tour, you had a debut release of single, I Wanna Steal Your Car, how did that come about?

H: We’ve had that song for ages, it was in the original set two years ago.
O: It was one of the songs where our sound started to develop, but the production on it is more commercial than our actual sound. Shout out to Mark Underdown who did a great job producing it and shout out to BIMM’s HUBB records, who helped put it together.

Who are your major influences in music?

O: Highly Suspect are definitely, one of my favourite bands. Death From Above 1979 are so good at riff writing. H: I played some Death From Above to my dad and he said: “you can tell Oli writes a lot of his riffs with inspiration from these guys.”
O: A lot of my songwriting influences are from all sorts of places. I really love 90’s hip-hop. I don’t know if that weaves its way in sometimes, maybe, but I also like a lot of old folk artists, 70’s psych and grunge.
H: I take influence from a lot of rock drummers like Brad Wilk (Rage Against The Machine), Joey Castillo (Queens Of The Stone Age) and of course the god himself, John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). O: Dan likes John Mayer – he reminds me of Tom Morello in the way he plays and comes up with little tone changes that are very much the signature of sound, which is very hard to do as a guitarist – he’s a great guitarist.
H: Dan never overplays, it’s always simple yet effective. Not that it’s just ‘plain and simple’, because he’s a fantastic guitarist.