The Rakes

Formed in London in 2004, The Rakes were best known for being one of the front runners of the post-punk revival genre. With their first release, the sub-2 minute 22 Grand Job on the small London Trash Aesthetics label in May, City Rockers picked up the band and released the 2-and-a-half liberation anthem Strasbourg just four months later, with the group then releasing a tale of the weekly grind, Retreat, on the Moshi Moshi Music label on 18th April 2005. The quartet were then picked up by Richard Branson's V2 Records label, who re-issued Retreat, and marketed it as the first single from their forthcoming debut, the week after it had been originally released. The second single from the album, Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club, Sleep) dropped on 1st August, with the album, Capture / Release, coming along 2 weeks after, overall receiving positive reviews. The full issue of 22 Grand Job in October was the last release from the original issue of the album, with originally non-album single All Too Human being released in February 2006, with it amended to an April re-issue of the LP. The band then went back into the studio to record their darker follow up, with We Danced Together being the first single from the album, Ten New Messages, which came out 2 weeks before the album was released on 26th March 2007. Only one other single - The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect - was released from the album in July. The band's final album, the half-an-hour Klang from 23rd March 2009, received mass acclaim despite very minimal promotion (with the lead single, 1989, only being released a week earlier). That's The Reason and The Light From Your Mac were also penned to be released as singles, but in October, the group announced that they were to quit making music under their name, reportedly due to stress from an overloaded touring schedule. Strasbourg's video is below, with downloads following.