By Kieran Webber

The Frankly’s first entered my sphere when I by chance caught their single ‘Weasel’, within the first chord I knew I was going to fall in love with the all female garage rock/grunge band. Their noise is of a similar ilk to Pale Honey, PINS and projects by QOTSA and Jack White, a frantic wall of noise that is relentless and delightfully infectious. Recently the band released their debut album ‘Are You Listening?’ which had rave reviews from publications and blogs around the world. Rightly so, it was a thumping collection of devilishly raucous garage rock.

We were eager to get to know more about the all female band comprised of members from Sweden and the UK so we asked them a few questions!

CLUNK: So how did you guys all meet and at what point did you decide to create The Franklys?

TF: Jen and Fanny are school friends from Sweden and have been playing and making music together since they were wee lassies. In their late teens, they made a joint decision to move to the UK to pursue a career in music, where they met Zoe and then later Lexi, who was put in touch by a mutual friend.

CLUNK: How did you guys come up with the name?

TF: We’re pretty ‘frank’ and straight to the point, so the name made sense!

CLUNK: Do you have similar influences or does it differ between each person?

TF: It varies hugely!!! From QOTSA to Blondie, the Police to Le Tigre, we like a little bit of errrr’thing.

“Playing live is what we’re all about and pretty much why all of us wanted to play in a band the first place”

CLUNK: What artists/people have influenced you individually?

Lexi – Alkaline Trio, especially their drummer Derek Grant
Fanny – most of Josh Homme and Jack White’s projects
Jen – Robert Plant, Debbie Harry and Karen O
Zoe – Carol Kaye, Joan Jett & Green Day

CLUNK: Your music has an incredible amount of energy is this something that is present when playing live?

TF: Why thank you. Playing live is what we’re all about and pretty much why all of us wanted to play in a band the first place. We are high-energy 100% and completely in our element up on stage.

CLUNK: What do you like to bring to your live performances?

TF: A lot of hair and a lot of jumping about.

CLUNK: The world is in a pretty interesting place right now in regards to politics and music is becoming more and more political because of that. Would you say that your music has a political edge and why do you think more music is becoming political?

TF: Although we don’t specifically write about politics, we are political people and we think that shows. We write music because we want to write music, not because we want to spread our political views through music, like a lot of wonderful punk bands. However, we’re by no means shy to stand up for what we believe in and we are proud feminists.

“Although we don’t specifically write about politics, we are political people and we think that shows”

CLUNK: Would you consider yourselves political people?

TF: Haha yes!! As above.

CLUNK: Does your debut album ‘Are You Listening’ be a political album? Is there a particular message within the release?

TF: Jen writes a lot about current happenings, past events and things that have happened to her, so there is not a particular ‘message’ with this release. However, we really wanted to capture our live sound on record and to show our fans old and new, that we are a diverse, fun and interesting band to listen to.

CLUNK: Lastly, what can we expect from you guys this year and beyond?

TF: We just released our latest single ‘Keeper’ and we’ve a couple of shows left for before the Christmas break. Next year we hit Europe and tour our butts off! We may have already started the 2nd album too 😉