Itchy Arses, Being Broke And Adalita In A 3D Computer

French Rockets’ first album 555 was released in 2007. Back then, the band was a two-piece who quickly became a trio with the induction of Roger Poustie to the group. Soon after the release, the band toured over east and over time scored support slots for Wooden Shjips, Tame Impala, Friendly Fires, Ratatat, POND and more. After going relatively quiet for a few years, the band are on the cusp of releasing their second album, eight years on from the first, and vocalist Jamie MacDougall’s enthusiasm (and relief) can hardly be contained. “We’ve been sitting on this album and it’s been giving us itchy arses,” he chuckles. 

"We were just in the studio in dribs and drabs whenever we could."

The band finished the new album, titled Arc, in 2012 as a three-piece (they would be joined soon after by Jamie Sher), so it has certainly been a long time coming. The band spent most of their time between albums honing in on their live sound and becoming a “real band”, but that wasn’t the only reason it’s taken until 2015 to get the songs out. “Basically what took so long was that we were all really broke and we ran out of money multiple times, and the way we recorded it, because of that lack of money, we were just in the studio in dribs and drabs whenever we could. We did it with a friend called Laurie [McCallum], and he’d just flip us in whenever he could because it was his studio we were doing it in. Even if he had a band in during the day to pay the bills, he’d flip us in at night time under the cover of darkness. So it just took as long as it did, really; we certainly didn’t plan on it taking that long, that’s for sure.”

Two of the tracks on Arc feature guest performances by Magic Dirt’s Adalita. As long-time friends of the group, it was pretty easy to ask her to be a part of things. “We decided we really needed some female vocals on some songs, and Adalita was like, ‘Yeah!’ We had the songs already so we sent some rough drafts to her and she just added her bits and sent them back.” The band also released a music clip for the Adalita-featured track Stuck In The Moment, which is a total trip, combining scanned images and bizarre computerised effects. “We came up with that ourselves. It was all put together by Jamie Sher, he works with 3D cameras. We’re working on another clip at the moment that’s [the] next level after that, he’s getting better at all that sort of thing, it’s great to watch. It was basically just doing a capture of Carl [Properjohn] with the 3D thing, and through happenstance he got a job over in Melbourne scanning something, so he flew over and caught up with Adalita and scanned her, and put it into the 3D computer.”
Given it’s been years since this album’s tracks were finished, the group are already looking ahead. “There are so many ideas, it’s crazy. Most of it is work on computers so we can come up with our own things, [but] it’s a relief, I tell ya [having the album out]. We were going a bit stir-crazy.”