RUFUS did a lot of touring on the back of Atlas, their gold-selling, ARIA No.1 album. And why wouldn't they? Atlas had the kind of breakaway success every band dreams of; success that opened doors overseas, as well as on home shores. Though frontman Tyrone Lindqvist says they didn't ever plan to be performing anywhere other than Australia.
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"When we made that first record, our goal was to get played on Triple J and to play our favourite venues," he says. "And it kind of did a lot better than what we expected, so that was great."
Currently on tour to support You Were Right, the first single from their upcoming sophomore LP Bloom, the lads will be dropping into Canberra to play the ANU before taking off for North America in November.
"North America is really exciting," Lindqvist says. "Radio stations are playing us and it seems like there is some kind of excitement over there."
One thing Lindqvist has been surprised by is that North America is feeling love for RUFUS more than Europe. "Not that it's not connecting over there, but there has definitely been more of a buzz in the States," he says.
"It's only pretty early to say that, but I guess we got the opportunity to play some cool little boutique festivals over there on some cool line-ups. We've played in front of some great crowds and people are knowing the words, which is pretty surreal."
To write Bloom, the trio based themselves in Friedrichshain, a fashionable, artistic borough of Berlin.
"The reason we went to Berlin in the first place was we'd been there a year before and we'd had four days there just to test it out. We had like a shortlist of maybe three or four places we wanted to start the process of writing the next album and that was one of them. And as soon as we got there, we were like, this is perfect, let's go here."
Renting out a place on Airbnb, the lads were at the centre of things and soaked up plenty of the town's creativity.
"Berlin is like a ridiculous creative hub in itself and you go into any of the shops around Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg and anything that's on a shelf, you ask the person that works there, 'What's this?' and 99 per cent of the time they know where it's from, they know what it is, they know who makes it and they are really passionate about it. So it's a really passion-driven area. It's really free."
RUFUS also made sure they sampled their fair share of the unique Berlin nightlife.
"It doesn't really work on the same clock as Australia, in that if you wanted to go out at 3am, you could go out anywhere, or 6am," says Lindqvist. "Which was really cool for us creatively because any time we'd get writer's block, or any time we'd feel we were lacking a little bit of inspiration, it was easy to walk down the street and go to one of the clubs there and see one of our favourite DJs.
"Being that it's in the middle of Europe it's kind of spoiled with a lot of really amazing acts that cruise through and do shows throughout the week. So every night of the week there is pretty much someone that you probably know or like that you can catch. And that was really cool."
And if You Were Right is anything to go by, the rest of Bloom is sure to be pretty cool too.
RUFUS
When: 8pm, Thursday, 29 October
Where: ANU Bar
Tickets: $42.31 via premier.ticketek.com.au
