Q & A with The Districts to celebrate the release of new album 'Popular Manipulations'

The Districts have released 'Popular Manipulations' and its our Album of The Week here at Rabbit Radio. To celebrate  Tayla Sudall asked the band a few questions about the exciting release, such as the bands influences, tour plans and inspiration for the new clip release, check it out!

 What can people expect from the new 11-track album in comparison to your first album, ‘A Flourish and a Spoil’? 
Flourish was essentially recorded all live with very few overdubs, we really tried to emulate our live show as much as possible. "Popular Manipulations" is much more of a studio effort. It was recorded in 2 cities over a long period of time, and we had around 40-50 songs written and demoed. So we were much pickier than with Flourish and wanted to make music with more dynamics and textures.

Did you take on any new influences when writing ‘Popular Manipulations’?
For sure, before we started making the new record we toured for basically a whole year which gave lots of van time to listen to random stuff. "Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy) " and "Another Green World" by Brian Eno were big inspirations production wise.

Where did the name ‘Popular Manipulations’ come from?
It was originally the title of a song that ended up not making the album, but we thought the name would make a great title so we just yanked it. Hopefully the song will come to light in some form someday! 

It’s been a little while since you guys released ‘A Flourish and a Spoil’ and played at Splendour in the Grass – do you think you guys have changed much as musicians in that time?
As a drummer I've definitely thought more about restraint, especially in a studio setting. As musicians we've all played in different projects over the last 2 years which has been really fun and have expanded our musical scopes outside the Districts setting which we feel very comfortable in.

How long did the album take you to write? Did you guys pretty much start writing it straight after ‘A Flourish and a Spoil’? 
We ended up having around a year to write, demo, & record after we toured the heck out of Flourish. It was the first time in our bands lifespan that we've been able to take some time off from playing live and really just focus on the writing process.

Do you guys have a favourite off the new album? 
Hmm my personal favorite is probably Salt!

Could you tell me a bit about the album cover and what it stands for? 
The photograph was originally a black and white picture taken by Stephen Salmieri. Our friend/ great artist Dylan Moss turned us on to his photos around the time we needed to get a cover together. His photo shows a special moment between two young kids in a very innocent way, but also has a tent full of people's silhouettes in the background which we think is a cool and creepy contrast.

 The film clip for ‘Ordinary Day’, a single from the new album, is a bit eerie, can you tell us about how you guys came up with the ideas for your film clip? 
I really wanted to see a scene of some kind of strange character put lipstick on and get on stage to preform. We found lots of white and masks for really cheap and Pat had the idea of having the audience doing synchronized movement. We wanted to create an eerie emotion, and explore themes of isolation and general anxieties being on a stage in front of people can sometimes create.
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 Are there any tour plans in sight after the album release?
We're on a US tour at the moment doing east coast dates in support of the album and have a month long tour in U.K/ EU in September. Will tour some more in the fall in America. Hoping to be able to make it back to Australia in 2018!