Rest Up talk about their newest album, defining their music, and the idea of “Selling Out”
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About four years ago, high school friends Hippolyte (bassist) and Hugo (drummer) stumbled upon their lead singer, Simon, while they were listening to music at a park. The three bonded over good songs and Rest Up was born. Living in the small town of Angers in the west of France, the boys began practicing and developing their own unique sound.
(Right To left) Simon, hugo, and hippolyte, by alessandra berry
When it comes to their genre, there isn’t one term or description that the band resonates with.
“We don't really like using a genre for our music because we know it's very eclectic. It can be very soft and very harsh at the same time,”
Simon began. “The girl who worked on our biography, she used the term fuzzpop. I don’t like it.”
Simon explained that although their sound may not be perceived as “punk” either, they are heavily influenced by the energy that punk music inspires. “Thats why a lot of people say we play post punk i guess. But we just place all the new bands under that (post-punk) category.”
This hard-to-define quality to their sound has a lot to do with their very intuitive process of song writing.
“We're not going to rehearse with a certain type of song we want to play in mind. Most of the album just comes from happy accidents. Testing a pedal or trying something new on the guitar or drums and just being like oh can you play that again? and it just becomes a song… it depends on the mood of the day”
Simon revealed.
With this new album, however, they were put in a completely different environment. “I guess the biggest challenge was to go to the UK to record it because we really wanted to have a special moment for the album,” Simon explained. Given the chance to record with Gillaband’s Daniel Fox, the Rest Up boys were taken out of their comfort zone to try something new. “We all agreed Gillaband is one of our main inspirations, so working with (Daniel) was really challenging because we had to do what we would do in a random studio, but with a guy we really like”. Overall though, the process of creating the album came quite naturally to them. “We just spent seven days recording it and everything went really smooth. Even with Daniel, he really liked working on it”.
Once the creation part (aka the fun part) was done, the boys had to tackle the album promotion. “We have to be on whatsapp every minute of the day,” Hugo laughed.
“The labels were working together with our bookers to make it easy for us, but we’re learning a lot right now. I think none of us expected everything. We thought once you have a label it's really easy and everything just goes its way, but it's not. Like you have to work actually (laughs). But it’s great,”
explained Simon.
Starting as something more niche and aiming for technically impressive rather than commercially digestible, Rest Up have agreed that they want to move out of that era of their sound. So much so that they don’t even play any of the songs from their first album in their live set anymore. “ It Was Summer ça fait partie des morceaux qu’on aime le moins, enfin on est moins en accord avec, si on le rejoue maintenant ça n’aura plus beaucoup de sens pour nous” ( "It was summer" is one of the songs we like the least. Or rather, we're less in agreement with it. If we were to play it again now, it wouldn't make much sense for us anymore), Hippolyte admitted. Hugo also added that
“there’s a few songs we still like. I think Perfect Lies and Ties In Pocket Squares are part of it. Maybe one day they could be back on the set lists, but with all the songs we have they don’t match anymore”.
Rest up perform at chien stupide, by sixtine cail
Because they want to be received by audiences better, Rest Up has changed their general attitude when it comes to creating their music. Simon explained that now they’re no longer “making music for musicians but making music for everyone. Because when we started we really wanted to be anything but mainstream. We had our hate period on Fontaines D.C, for example because they went mainstream. But I kind of get it now. It’s not bad. It's very important to make music for everyone; Making music for everyone and creating spaces for people so that they can express themselves. Having a community with people comes by doing simple things to hear”.
Now that they have new songs that they feel proud to perform, their main focus is perfecting their live set.
“I think we want to get a live set that really feels like a performance. Like, when you go to a Rest Up gig you really get into a specific mood; you’re not just seeing a gig. We want to create a little bubble for the moment.”
said Simon.
While Rest Up is quite literally a young band, Simon, Hippolyte, and Hugo all being under 23, they’ve already learned so much about themselves and the music that they want to create. Their new album is definitely a step in the right direction for the band. Their song Weekend Girlfriend especially has big hit potential.
click to listen to their new album: real sensations