Music
Preview: Arkells get ready to take over the UK this month
Canada’s best kept rock secret finish off their European tour with three shows across the UK in London, Manchester and Glasgow.
Back in 2006 at McMaster University in Hamilon/Ontario, Max Kerman, Mike DeAngelis, Nick Dika, Anthony Carone, Tim Oxford and Dan Griffin started a rock band. With their 2008 release of Jackson Square, Arkells burst onto Canada’s music scene with the dying breed of old-school rock’n’roll. They have since become national icons, released four studio albums and toured all over the world. And not only that, the band have gone on to win four Juno Awards and earned gold status with their last album High Noon. Now with their latest album, Morning Report, the five-piece are set to take over the world.
With three intimate shows on the bill for the UK, kicking off with a sold out show at London’s Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen followed by Manchester’s Gullivers and Glasgow’s Broadcast, the Hamilton rockers are getting ready to unleash their charm on British audiences. And it won’t be hard to fall in love with them. While they were born into the mid-2000s Canadian indie renaissance, their influences reach far further with Elton John, John Lennon and even Drake. The five-piece like to venture outside of their comfort zone and listen to top 40 chart pop, Kanye West and Beyonce. There’s a track on their new record called Drake’s Dad. In the video, Drake’s actual dad features and the song is a tune, about a stroll through Nashville, Tennessee where they meet to talk about girls and getting drunk.
Arkell’s newest single My Heart’s Always Yours sounds like a classic love song at first sight but shows an endearing underlying heartbreak. It all starts out with a guy falling in love hearing his girl sing in the shower. The chorus tugs at heart strings with desperate calls of “I’ll be here, I’ll be waiting for you.”
What’s important to Arkells is constantly reinventing themselves and staying true to who they are. So while their new record is musically and lyrically different to when they first started out, it’s all the more representative of all they have experienced since. Max Kermann said in an interview earlier this year: “When you put out a record, you might lose people but you also might gain people too and if you kept on doing the same thing, you might keep those fans but also bore them a little.”
But seeing Arkells live is not just a musical treat, it is also some of the most fun you’ll have at a gig. The band don’t shy away from a bit of fun and a few covers. Just last month they played a few shows with UK folk rock singer Frank Turner and belted out a medley of Bruce Springsteen hits testing Frank Turner’s impersonation skills.
You can still get the last remaining tickets for the band’s Manchester show via Ticketmaster.co.uk.
Our heart is always yours, Arkells.
