“I feel like this is a really – no pun intended – instrumental time in our lives,” Alithea Tuttle muses. The Rocket singer and bassist is sitting around a high table in a Shoreditch pub with the rest of her bandmates on a sunny August afternoon, days before the Los Angeles group’s run of shows supporting Smashing Pumpkins kicks off.
She’s right about the importance of this period for the band. Not only have they been given the opportunity of a lifetime to open for their heroes this summer, when NME meets them in London, they’re also gearing up for the release of their debut album, ‘R Is For Rocket’, which arrives today. Before now, the four-piece alt-rock band have only had the eight tracks of their 2023 debut EP ‘Versions Of You’, which received an extended reissue earlier this year, and early singles from their full-length to show the world what they’re about. Now, they can share a fuller picture and lay the foundations for what lies ahead.
‘R Is For Rocket’ is a document of Rocket’s early days – literally. “The first song on the record [‘The Choice’] is the first song we ever wrote,” reveals Tuttle. “[The demos of that song are] the first time I ever sang into a mic and we recorded.” The song’s gentle, sparkling warmth didn’t make the cut for ‘Versions Of You’, but made sense for the album because “it feels different than the rest of the record”. “I think, ultimately, that was the intention for the entire record,” Tuttle explains, “and that’s why we did the EP first – like, ‘Let’s get these songs out and establish our vibe’.”
“If you listen to our EP and then you listen to our record and that’s the first song you hear, you might be like, ‘OK, this is definitely the same band, but they’re obviously trying something new’,” guitarist Desi Scaglione chimes in. It’s funny, because it’s such an old idea.”
Over time, Rocket moulded songs old and new into what now constitutes their debut album – a collection that fulfils their early promise with astonishing brilliance. It’s as packed full of electrifying riffs as it is dreamy, crushed velvet melodies and vocal harmonies, and finds the band – completed by guitarist Baron Rinzler and drummer Cooper Ladomade – sounding emboldened as they try on different facets of their artistry.
With the songs changing over time, have you had to learn patience and not rush into thinking things are complete before the full song has shown up?
Desi Scaglione: “I was just thinking about this. Time has always been on our side in terms of writing songs and giving space in between writing songs, whether it’s starting a song and giving it space and finishing it, or recording it and then giving it space and coming back to it. Or just even coming up with an overdub part that completes the song that wasn’t there before has always benefited us a lot.
“We recorded half the record in January 2024 and then toured a bunch, and then recorded the second half in August, toured a bunch and did overdubs while we were home, and would just always have weeks to sometimes months in between working on these songs. We would play these songs live, and it would be like, ‘I heard this in my head while we were playing it one night, maybe this would be cool’, and trying it, and it works out.”
Alithea Tuttle: “We wrote ‘Wide Awake’ quite early on, and we had the chorus to that song, we had it the same way with the vocals, and then when we were writing this record, we were like, ‘Well, what about that one song?’ Then we completely changed the chorus out. I’m glad we didn’t just shove that on the EP when it didn’t feel right. Waiting and revisiting ideas has been really helpful.”
What’s the song that’s changed the most over time or through touring?
Scaglione: “Probably ‘Wide Awake’.”
Tuttle: “I think that was the most massive, drastic change. The lyrics changed, the vocals, the melody changed completely. You know when someone shows you a video of you talking and you hear your voice and you’re like, ‘Who is that?!’ Listening back to ‘Wide Awake’ with the original chorus felt like that. It just got under my skin, and it was weird. No one else would ever think anything of it, but I was like, ‘If we want to do this song, I have to change it’. I don’t know what it was.”
Rinzler: “But it was the right call.”
Tuttle: “Yeah, now I love singing it, hearing it, playing it. It’s a really fun song for us to play, too, because although I don’t think it’s that different from the rest of our songs, when you’re watching the whole set, it’s very big and loud, and then that song is just very driving. At least in the verse and the chorus, it’s not very dynamic. It’s very one line, like you’re on the train, and then when you get to the end with the little drum solo type outro… It’s fun. I can tell when we play it, too, that the crowd feels different. That’s what was also cool about this record – we really wanted to make sure that it was dynamic and had those soft moments, but then we’re gonna put in classic us songs. Classic us! [laughs]”
One of those softer moments is ‘Number One Fan’, which is a lot slower than people might expect from you based on what you have out already…
Scaglione: “When we demoed that idea out – this is gonna sound so stupid – I had just got a new piece of recording gear, this little preamp, and I was like, ‘I just want to use it and do something’ and laid down the acoustics. There’s a Charlie Brown song, ‘The Great Pumpkin Waltz’, and it has the most wonderful vibe to it. It’s just warm and sweet. I always want our music to give that vibe off, and that song does encompass that. I know that sounds silly, but I think we did that on that song. There’s also a Radiohead song off ‘Kid A’… ‘How To Disappear Completely’…”
Tuttle: “So it’s pretty much Radiohead meets Charlie Brown.”
Scaglione: “‘Number One Fan’ doesn’t sound anything like ‘How To Disappear Completely’, but it’s a great, down-tempo acoustic song.”
Tuttle: “We actually just learned how to play ‘Number One Fan’ live when we were rehearsing for tour, and I feel like once we get it down even tighter, it’ll be a really cool moment. On the record, it feels like a moment. It’s very special. It’s interesting too, because when we turned our record in, the people at our label were like, ‘OK, here are the standouts’ and I don’t think we thought that would be the song people would be like, ‘Oh, this is my favourite song’.”
Does hearing that it is a favourite for people give you more confidence to try and do even more different things when you’re writing in the future?
Tuttle: “Definitely. I feel like this record is a really good example of what we individually like as people. Not that the EP didn’t do that, but I think the EP was much more straightforward, and we love it still, but this feels so much deeper and so much more [representative of] our individual tastes. A lot of the music that any of us listen to outside of being in a band is not the music we make, like we all really love old country music. So it’s really exciting to be able to put something out that where we’re trying something and that feels authentic to us.”
Desi, you produced and mixed this album. You’ve said before that the process was therapeutic in some ways. How so?
Scaglione: “This is gonna sound ridiculous, but in the same way that doing the dishes is therapeutic – you just zone in and do it. We’re very particular about our band and the people we have working with us – and not working with us. Doing this on our own and showing everybody that we can do it is a very special thing. It’s also very therapeutic in the sense of this is all very special for us, and just being fully in charge of it and having a clear vision and being able to do it feels amazing. I think we’re fortunate enough to have a strong vision and see the end goal of what we want to do.”
This album is about relationships of all kinds. What have you learned about relationships through either writing and recording these songs or on tour in the time since?
Tuttle: “Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, and reminding yourself that this is everybody’s first time doing this, even if you were so horribly wronged by somebody or yourself. There’s a lot of stuff on the record that is me in reaction to me, and I think I’ve learned that whatever you think about yourself is probably not something that anybody else has ever noticed. Everybody’s always so concerned with themselves – not in a selfish way, but because you’re insecure about something, or we’re all in our own heads. It’s a really freeing feeling, being like, ‘I can actually just be me’. We’re lucky to get to do what we do, and if you have to go through a bad thing to have something cool to write about, that’s kind of worth it.”
Rinzler: “I’ve learned how important it is to show up for the people in your life, and just being present in something is the most important thing. You don’t have to do anything or say anything really, just be there – and for yourself, by extension. Being there for the people in your life and yourself is how you maintain any relationship.”
Tuttle: “That last song, ‘R Is For Rocket’, is so special to all of us and so fun to play because it requires so much trust. Not to be so annoying and woo woo, but you watch us play that song, and you can see the relationship between each and every one of us, all of us playing off each other. I have to trust that Cooper is gonna do the part that I think she’s going into, and if she doesn’t, then I’m gonna have to play something different, but we’ll adapt.”
Rocket’s ‘R Is For Rocket’ is out now via Transgressive Records/Canvasback