Dundee alt-rock duo Red Vanilla stand in the midst of a defining musical era. Since their formation during the pandemic, the band — composed of singer Anna Forsyth and guitarist George Weller — have become synonymous with a bold yet ethereal artistry. Combining aggressive, guitar-driven compositions with uplifting pop-hook vocals, Red Vanilla truly live up to their dichotomous name, balancing a magnetic blend of daring musicality with sweet optimism.
The duo recently shared their sophomore EP Where I Should Be on May 8, with the album serving as the cherry on top of a run of recent career milestones. After a number of festival appearances and supporting slots for the likes of Beach Riot, Redwood, Dea Matrona, and Kyle Falconer, Red Vanilla have also recently been signed on with Placebo’s management team following a small run of headlining shows in Thailand.
Serving as the follow-up to their 2024 debut EP Days of Grey, Where I Should Be chronicles everything that has happened since the band’s inaugural musical release. Remaining strong through their progression from a quartet to a duo, Red Vanilla maintain their steady drive to break through in both local and international music scenes. Fueled by dazzling dreams and an unwavering optimism, Forsyth and Miller express through their burning musicality that they will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to make it in today’s modern rock world.
Where I Should Be stands as a definitive body of work from the group, showcasing Red Vanilla’s wide sonic range more than ever before. While songs like “Electric Blue” and “I Thought I Had It” convey their heavy, ’90s rock influences, lighter numbers like “Play Me Something New” showcase the duo’s radiant, pop-inspired glimmer.
Their signature alt-rock sound coincides with the vulnerable themes present on the record, with Red Vanilla’s lyrics exploring the struggles of working in the music industry, the fear of time passing by, and self-doubt. However, it is through their fearless explorations of such personal subject matter that Red Vanilla come out stronger than ever before, with perseverance and ferocity serving as the ultimate throughline of Where I Should Be.
Ahead of the album’s release, Forsyth and Weller sat down with Melodic Magazine to discuss the making of the record, future plans for the band, and what motivates them to keep pushing on.
First I wanted to ask about your recent successes that you guys have had, because I feel like you’ve done so many cool things already. You toured Thailand last year –how did that come together and what was that tour like for you guys?
Anna: So we had found a manager who is from Dundee, same as us, but he actually lives out in Bangkok now. It wasn’t so much like a tour, but we went out there, we got to take all our gear out, and we played a show over in Bangkok. Which, that alone was crazy. But we stayed out there for a month.
George: We did a music video too. And then, if you know The La Fontaine’s, their drummer Jamie Keenan was there. So we supported him for a gig and stuff as well.
Anna: Yeah, it felt like being on tour, though. It was the first time we got to fly all our stuff out in hard cases and stay away from home and just live together as a band in a different country, basically. It was so cool.
Another thing that happened recently is that you were picked up by Placebo’s management team. How did that come together and what does that mean for the band going forward?
Anna: So our manager, Dave, because they’re from Dundee, his brother Athol had come to one of our gigs because somebody who runs a Dundee venue had told him about us. So he came to see us play and then told Dave about us. And then Dave offered us a couple of shows in London. So we got to support Kyle Falconer from The View and Dea Matrona at this place called Camden Underworld in London, which was so cool. So we just went down to London for maybe five days and then played those two shows. Then, after that, Dave said that he wanted to be our manager. So that was the first thing that came about with that, was getting to go out to Thailand to play our first show in Asia, which was obviously crazy. We don’t know exactly what’s next. There are lots of things that we’re discussing for possibilities. A lot of it’s tricky for us financially if it involves travel and stuff, because we’re working full time and you’ve got to pay bills and whatever back home. So nothing is set in stone right now, but we’re hopeful that we’re going to get some cool opportunities out of it.
Obviously the big thing happening is the new EP Where I Should Be. What’s on your mind as you’re getting ready to put out the new record?
George: I think we’re just really excited. We love Days of Grey, the first EP, because I think it’s a shame sometimes when people go like, ‘This is the new album, forget about the old one.’ We really love Days of Grey, but there’s stuff on this one that shows even more heaviness, but is also even more acoustic and chilled out. So it goes in both extremes, more heavy and more chilled out. There’s a much bigger range on it for sure.
Sonically or lyrically, in what ways did you push yourself on this EP? Is there any way you approached it differently for the making of this album compared to Days of Grey?
Anna: I think just going into it with a lot more confidence because we’d done it before. We put out a seven-song EP before. This is also seven tracks. So we were kind of like, ‘Oh, we know how to do it now.’ It’s not a scary thing.
George: We also did the whole making of the new EP literally in the spare room of my flat, which we use as a music rehearsal space and stuff like that. And what was great about that is our producer just brought up all his equipment, and whenever we needed a break to go watch a movie, we would just go next door to my living room and watch a movie. It was just a lot more chilled out. And the biggest thing that made it so chilled out was when we did Days of Grey, we had to do all the guitar in one day, all the bass in one day, all the vocals in one day, and then stack them on top of each other. So there was a lot of time pressure, and it was only on the last day of recording that you saw the whole song come together. Whereas what our producer said we could do this time, because it was in a more chilled out environment, doing it in my flat, was we could just take a song at a time and record a whole song each day. So we’d finish the day, another song done, and just go on to the next one. It was just really enjoyable. No stress whatsoever.
Anna: Exactly. I loved it. I can’t wait to do it again.
There are so many cool songs on the album, and I love the central theme throughout the album as well. Anna, you had said that the song “Ask Her If She’s Happy” was one of your favorite songs on the album, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about why that song is your favorite or the songwriting process behind that song specifically.
Anna: I actually wrote it for my past self. I’m singing to my past self, like, say, me when I was 17, as myself now at 23. It’s talking about becoming who I am now and basically just how I wish I could say to my past self that everything’s going to be fine. You’re going to do what you want to do. You’re going to be in your band. You’re going to write all these songs that you’re so proud of and play the shows and have friendships and life’s going to get better basically. And musically, I love that song so much. I hear that song being played at a festival. I would love to get a decent festival slot. Because that song’s going to be in our new setlist now as well. We’ve updated our setlist to fit the second EP. So yeah, I just love it.
I know it’s hard to pick favorites, but are there any other songs on the EP that stand out to you right now or that are maybe your favorite?
George: Probably the last one to come out, “Play Me Something New.” That’s a really nice song. There’s just something about it where it started out just acoustic, but our producer’s a wizard when it comes to everything musically. He’s also just amazing at doing e-drums, so he added a sort of beat on top of it, and it just transformed it.
Anna: It’s very synth-y and dreamy and nostalgic.
George: If you like anything off the Drive soundtrack, I feel like that sort of style of song could fit on that.
Anna: I’m excited about that song as well, because there’s proper storytelling in that song, lyrically. There’s a whole story, and I was just pouring my heart out on it basically. I was very honest. And in those lyrics as well, I referenced other songs, which to me adds to the whole story of what that song’s about because I’m referencing songs from artists that I love that were part of the story. And it’s also very different for us. We’ve never done an e-drums, synth-type song like that, so that’s definitely a personal favorite.
Going off of that, the theme of the EP talks a lot about this fear of time passing by, or years going by and then one day you wake up and realize it’s too late. I feel like that’s something everyone feels, but with that fear, how do you stay in the present or remind yourself it’s going to be okay? How do you stay grounded despite these worries?
Anna: I would say the band’s always been the main thing for me. It’s my purpose in life. I can’t control the passing of time. Yes, it stresses me out, it bothers me, but it gives me more motivation to focus on Red Vanilla. Because we have a set amount of time before it will be too late one day. And I know people can make it when they’re like forty and whatever, but we like to think we’re going to get to do some cool stuff when we’re a bit younger. But also we’re all very social. We have a very tight friend group and we hang out with each other pretty much every single day off that we have. So I think it’s just spending time with the right people and focusing on what you really care about. That’s all you can do.
The album also mentions the struggles of trying to make it in the music industry or trying to be successful as an up-and-coming band. As difficult as it gets, what keeps you motivated to stick with it and keep pushing through with Red Vanilla?
George: I think the biggest thing for me is, regardless of if we get to the point of success that we want to, and obviously we’ll do everything we can to get there, we’re still going to make music. It’s about the art of making the music and if people enjoy it, but we would do it if no one listened to it anyway and it was just us that listened to it, because we just love making music. There’s nothing quite like sitting down after you’ve done a demo and hitting play and going, ‘That didn’t exist half an hour ago.’
Anna: You’re so excited you actually want to jump up and down. It’s a very special feeling. And I think the pride that comes along with that…I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do since I was like 10 years old. I’ve been trying to write lyrics and I wanted to be in a band. And I met George when I was 17. So I waited a long time before I felt like I was ready to do that. So now that I have it, it’s just appreciating that all the time. But I do think as well, in terms of hoping for success, the way we look at it is we don’t have a plan B. There’s nothing else that we want to do with our lives. There’s nothing else that brings us this level of joy or fulfillment. So when it feels so tough and it feels so hard, we have literally no other option.
George: We do want to be able to look in the mirror when it’s hypothetically too late and go, ‘You know what? It didn’t work out, but we did everything we could to do it. No regrets. And we had a great time along the way.’
The album talks about these fears or these worries of time passing by, but alternatively, how did making this album maybe relieve your worries in that sense?
Anna: I’ve always said songwriting is like therapy for me. It’s like self-help. And if anything goes wrong in my life and I write a song about it, it’s almost immediately like the thing that went wrong is kind of worth happening because I got a song out of it. So that’s a massive part of it, just making the music itself and us being able to hit play on this new EP and go, ‘This didn’t exist, now it does, and we did that from scratch.’ That’s such a nice feeling. And also, I’m so inspired by other artists out there. There’s bands I’ve watched literally go from nothing and work their way up to playing massive support tours and arenas and things. It just makes you think, ‘If they can do it, we can do it.’ It’s not as if the music industry’s got a set amount of spaces, and you either get there or you don’t. There’s always going to be new bands. There’s always going to be space for somebody else. So hopefully it’s kind of just about waiting for when your time is, which we’re willing to do.
You mentioned some artists that you’ve seen have these cool opportunities. In terms of that, who are some of your favorite artists or who are some artists that are maybe inspiring you at the moment?
Anna: I’m always massively inspired by Paramore. They’re my favorite band. And vocally especially, I like to try and push my range, because Hayley Williams’ vocals are so fun to sing. I want to incorporate that level of fun as well into our songs. Lyrically, I’m very inspired by Matty Healy and Ellie Rowsell, because they’re such good storytellers and they’re so raw and honest in their lyrics. You can listen to their songs and it feels like reading a page out of their personal journal or something.
George: If you take the end of one of the songs on the EP, “I Thought I Had It,” it’s got that sort of heavy outro. I’d been listening to a lot of Queens of the Stone Age at the time I wrote that, especially Songs for the Deaf. That song is inspired by that album in particular. And a lot of the heaviness that we do comes from our producer as well. He’s the drummer in a band called To Kill Achilles, who are also from Dundee, and they’re a huge inspiration to us with the way they’ve done everything and worked so hard. Their singer helps record the drums and stuff, so that was a dream for me as well, because they’re like my favorite band. They’ve been my number one on Spotify for like five years in a row.
Anna: I think that’s what’s quite fun about Red Vanilla as well. I mean, I love my heavy music too, but the boys are so into their heavy music, and musically a lot of the time that really shows. But then I like a lot of pop. And then, because we’ve got female vocals as well, we keep our songs quite fun. And they’re songs you’d maybe want to jump or bounce around to, but they’ve got some nastier elements in there too, which is exciting for me. I love the heavier side of our songs too.
Going back a little bit, but in terms of Red Vanilla finding success or “making it,” what does that look like for you? Is it playing certain size venues? What is the ultimate dream or goal for the band in that sense?
George: I’ve talked about this quite a lot — the ultimate dream is to obviously do stuff like main stage at Reading, and we’ll keep working towards that. But I would say we’ve achieved our success when we can go and do a six-month tour at smaller capacity venues, like maybe 500 to 800, and sell it out. Going on a tour and doing that, that means we’ve done a good job. But the ultimate dream is main stage Reading, isn’t it?
Anna: Yeah, exactly. We just dream big because I feel in the music industry, if you get the ball rolling, typically speaking, you do just kind of keep going up as long as you can continue to write good quality music. So, if we’re going to dream that we can go on and play a sold-out tour of 200-capacity venues, we may as well keep dreaming that we can do more than that too. And we’re a long way off right now, we’re well aware of that. But I feel like with our work ethic and our self-belief, we believe we can get somewhere.
Are there any other plans or projects for this year that you’d be able to share or talk about?
Anna: We basically have our first album fully written. We have it demoed. And that’s going to be, I think, 14 tracks. Some of these songs I’m so excited about. Right now we’re kind of just saving money and planning out when we’re going to start recording the album.
George: We’ll start doing it this year though, for sure. We’ll just start getting back to it because there’s nothing more fun than sitting in this room and getting started. And some of these songs on the album are brand new ones, and some of them we’ve had for like five years. Like “Electric Blue” off the new EP, that was the second song we ever wrote. It’s gone through a lot of changes. So there’s new stuff on the album, but it’s not just like, ‘New album, we’re starting from scratch.’ Some of these songs have been in the bank for a long time.
I’m sure it’s so satisfying to have a song sitting in the vaults, and then soon it’s finally a physical thing and it’s finally out there.
Anna: Yeah, being able to hear these songs professionally recorded when we’ve either just had them in rehearsal or demoed is so exciting. And just knowing that we’ve got so much yet to come, because I think we spent a lot of time planning and preparing, doing a lot of songwriting, a lot of gigging and trying to just sort out our live set and basically get to a point where we felt like we were ready to present ourselves.
George: A lot of time preparing. And we didn’t want to release anything on Spotify that we weren’t 100% happy with.
Anna: But because we’ve got so much stuff saved up, we can kind of just keep going now. We’ve got a lot of material to release. So that’s the plan.
Stream Where I Should Be here.
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