A CONVERSATION WITH…DUTCH CRIMINAL RECORD
It’s midnight, the tour van broke down, and it seems like nothing is going right for an interview. With only 20 minutes to chat, we got a chance to talk with two members of Dutch Criminal Record (Joe Frampton, drummer, and Joe Delaney-Stone, guitarist and vocalist) to get to know the people behind the viral TikToks and the tangerine rock taking over the UK.
WHEN DID YOU GUYS FALL IN LOVE WITH MUSIC?
Joe Delaney-Stone: It'd have to be when I was about 14 and heard a Wombats song. That, or a really early Arctic Monkeys song. And then I fell out of love with music at the like second or third 6:00 AM start for tour... especially after a night of drinking.
Joe Frampton: Probably fell in love with music, or certainly the prospect of doing music, with the final scene of School of Rock. I remember watching that for the first time, being like “Imagine doing that...”. I’d definitely say it was my musical sexual awakening.
Joe Delaney-Stone: And there’s also that... Spider Guy?
Joe Frampton: Yeah with the chest tattoo. Now that was my sexual awakening
Joe Delaney-Stone: And then your musical awakening was the scene before.
Safe to say you learn a lot about someone through that question. So, you’ve changed members and how many members there are over the years like a Paramore-esque situation. How did you get to your current lineup?
Joe Delaney-Stone: So, me and Sam [Thrussell], we were founding members in 2012 when we were in GSCE music class together. We had two pals from school in it too: Alex on drums and Rio on bass initially. And then we all went to uni and Alex dropped off first cause he started playing gigs with other bands. And then we got Joe [Frampton] in. Then right before Covid started, Rio [Hanan] got a job and dropped off cause he couldn't make a lot of shows. We didn’t really need a bassist during Covid.
Joe Frampton: We still don’t have a full-time bassist, but we have Mitchell. We've got our live band with Mitchell and Chris (keys and percussion) for our live band, but our three-piece regularly. But since Chris and Mitchell both work, sometimes we’ll have a different bassist, or we just won’t have Chris on keys and percussion.
You two have been in the band different amounts of time, but what do you think has changed in the band? Not only in your music, but as musicians and as people?
Joe Frampton: On my end, it's hard to say for the early days, but I was a fan of the band since I’m only two years younger than Joe and Sam. We were all at the same school, and I remember going to see them at the Battle of the Bands. And in the best way, the music then was simpler. Back then, it was four 16-year-olds making and writing music that they would like. It was happy-go-lucky sweet. And our music right now, it's far more intricate. Like with ‘Outside’ or ‘Bondi Bay’ (2014), you could have done that in half a day. Not literally, but it’s far simpler than the tracks we do now. They’re so sonically different as well. We try and bang out a song in a day, but often we can't. Everything about our music is getting more complicated as we progress as musicians. As a band together and separately, so our sound’s naturally progressing. But we'll always be pigeonholed as a surf pop band, even though I really don't think our music right now is surf pop.
What would you call your music then? Beyond a one-word genre answer, what is Dutch Criminal Record’s sound?
Joe Delaney-Stone: Call it Jeff.
Joe Frampton: Call it mid.
Joe Delaney-Stone: It's alternative indie rock really. It’s synthy in places, it's got dream pop, it’s got lofi influences...
Joe Frampton: See I like surf rock, but thinking about what genre you are is such a waste of time.
Joe Delaney-Stone: It’s awkward and annoying and then you start writing music that's only in that genre. It gets boring, and then you're like “Oh I want to write an emo track” but I think surf rock is nice and a catch-all. No one really knows what surf rock is anymore because it’s such an old-school style. Nothing is surf rock anymore. You can just say it. Or you can call us-
Joe Delaney-Stone: Tangerine rock. Like I'm quite coming around to tangerine rock because it means nothing. It’s giving psychedelic sort of vibes.
Maybe this could help describe your music more, too. If you could choose an 80s to early 2000s film for your music to appear in, what movie and song would you choose?
Joe Delaney-Stone: It’d have to be ‘Stuck Between’ (2016) on Sharknado (2013) or ‘Viennetrow Road’ (2019) on Eyes Wide Shut (1999). You know what I'd love? A really cringe TikTok edit of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000)murdering someone and instead of Huey Lewis and the News, it's like “That’s Dutch Criminal Record’s ‘00’s Nostalgia’’’ (2020). Yeah, just like matching him to ‘Socks and Sandals.’
I fully expect to see that on the DCR TikTok page in the future. Speaking of the future, what can you share that's upcoming?
Joe Delaney-Stone: We like to keep things pretty locked down.
Joe Frampton: The word “prick” has been thrown our way many times. But that's not really relevant. But the word album has also been mentioned...
Joe Delaney-Stone: Floated... Suggested, if you will..
Joe Frampton: Dude, you're telling too many people about it.
Joe Delaney-Stone: There’ll almost definitely be a single. Maybe two.
Joe Frampton: Could be four.
Joe Delaney-Stone: Could be five, but probably four. We have our London show that was postponed until March which will be good. Hopefully some festivals, and almost definitely a tour around Autumn 2023.
I’ll make sure people know how mysterious you all sound.
Joe Delaney-Stone: Get the tone- that's very important.
What makes Dutch Criminal Record the way it is?
Joe Delaney-Stone: I think it's the fact that we're just bad people.
Joe Frampton: There's a high level of neurodivergence... neurological diversity, if you will. And we have decent music taste, too.
This part’s two-fold. You guys have blown up on TikTok, with your 500,000 followers. Is there pressure to constantly be putting out the next big thing? And is there pressure to keep being ‘authentic’?
Joe Delaney-Stone: When we first started using TikTok, it was just weird and fun. A year ago, we were wondering if we would make it to 15,000 followers, and now sometimes it feels like it’s almost grown too fast for our minds to process it. Having multiple videos with millions of likes, it’s a perspective ruiner. It makes all of your achievements, which are still great, feel like they’re not. We’re in a bit of phase right now where we feel like we don’t have any cool ideas for new content, and it feels like nothing is going viral. It comes and goes.
When we were younger, we might have tried to spin it in some sort of way, but now I truly think we just can’t be bothered. It’s also funnier just to be real.
Joe Frampton: That was part of the reason like it’s funny and we’re like ‘How can we cash in on this?’ If it’s a shit situation, it’s like a little silver lining.
And circling back to the music: what’s the creative process for your songs?
Joe Delaney-Stone: Take ‘Light Up’ as an example: it started out as an acoustic song a few years ago with Sam playing on his harmonica, and then Frampton had the idea that it could be a band song. After testing it out at a festival, we workshopped it and here we are. Songs happen like that or one of us, typically me with my electric guitar or Sam with his acoustic guitar, will workshop something and record it and sometimes... sometimes it sounds good.