Pearl Handled Revolver Talk New Album, Single And More

Enigmatic UK dark rockers PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER are back with their deeply alluring new album, ‘Tales You Lose’, which arrives on Friday 18th April 2025. The band kindly chatted to us about the new album, single and more: 

Who is in Pearl Handled Revolver, how did you meet and what do they play?

Lee Vernon – Vocals, Harmonica

Simon Rinaldo – Organ, Keyboards

Andy Paris – Guitar, backing vocals

Chris Thatcher – Drums, backing vocals

Lucas Rinaldo – Bass, Guitar

 

Simon:    Lee and I had worked together for years before Pearl Handled Revolver, in a band called Blunderherd.   When we formed PHR we knew Andy from the local music scene and he was a perfect fit for the band.  We met Chris at a music festival, where he was fronting another band called Sulfur, our drummer was leaving and Chris asked for an audition.   Lucas is my son, he has grown up with the band but only joined recently.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Lee: Watching my Grandad entertain the whole room at gatherings. He was a self-taught pianist with a seemingly endless supply of bawdy songs he had gleaned over his years in the RAF. I later found out that he played harmonica too, so maybe a part of him is in me somewhere.

Simon:   I grew up listening to my parents’ records.  As a child I really loved The Beatles, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and still do.  I also remember listening to Santana for the exciting rhythms and the beautiful tones of the Hammond organ.

Lucas: Some of my earliest musical memories is my Dad putting on Supergrass – I Should Coco and Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life on his iPod.

Chris: Being terrified of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds (I love it now)

You have released your new single ‘Space Invader’. What was the inspiration/story behind the track?

Lee:  Having just watched the madness of that day’s world news, I was left with the sense that our self-obsessed preoccupations had left many of us numb to the discord and greed reported daily. As the news became ‘fiction’ the air filled with uneducated opinions, and we all became slowly disconnected. Too intent on judging outward, as we fall apart inside.

The single is accompanied by an official music video. What was the thought process behind the video and who directed it?

Simon:   Lee created the video for Space Invader.  He has become incredibly skilled with video editing but more importantly he is an artist with vision…. And a lot of patience.

 

In addition, you will release your new album ‘Tales You Lose’ is released on Friday 18th April 2025. How did you want to approach the making of the album?

Simon:   It has been six years since our previous studio album release Fantasy Reigns. We had been writing these songs for about three years before we started recording.   I had been playing around with the basis of what became Gilding The Lily and Lightning for a couple of years before presenting it to the band.   They didn’t become the songs they are on the album until we all worked on them together as a band.  Space Invader came from a guitar riff Andy was playing in a jam, which (along with Lucas’s bass effects) inspired Lee’s lyrics.  Hammer was literally a jam that became a structured song, as were Black Rock and Junkies.

We record the songs live together as a band, at a time when they feel ready… but in a few cases it was the spontaneous performance in just a few takes that we kept.  We tend to build the layers and some overdubs on top of the live performances.  This is very important for us to retain the natural ‘live’ sound of the band.

Chris: We deliberately spent a long time on the arrangements for this album, and didn’t set ourselves any deadlines.

 

Where did you record the album and who produced it?

Simon:   Tales You Lose was engineered and produced by Lucas and I, in our studio.  I engineered all the previous PHR recordings, but this was the first PHR project Lucas and I worked on producing together.  The final mixing and mastering was done by him.  His modern approach and skills acquired through his degree in music production has been a major part of how this album sounds.  Most importantly he has a great understanding of how PHR works and the feel of our previous recordings, he has managed to create a modern album that’s sympathetic to the vintage PHR sound. 

 

Do you use any particular instruments, microphones, recording equipment to help you get a particular sound/tone for the single? 

Simon:  We are very fortunate to have an ideal working environment in a great sounding studio, which has developed over many years across many of our albums.  We have always used a lot of vintage equipment to achieve the PHR sound; especially the keyboards.  For this album I didn’t use any digital keyboards at all, everything you hear is analogue, from the Hammond B3, Vox Continental, Farfisa, Rhodes, Wurlitzer and an MS20 synth.    We use real amplifiers for guitars and keyboards (mainly a 70’s Fender Twin Reverb, an old Roland guitar amp and Leslie 147).  We have a nice collection of microphones (some vintage, such as our favourite for mono drum overhead mic, a late 1960’s Sony C38).  Most mics go through a selection of characterful mic pre-amps.   Many of the effects are also analogue, the boys love their EFX boards and my Watkins Copy-Cat tape echo got a lot of use on this album.   Lee’s vocal mic of choice is a Shure SM7B, we have discovered this is the best mic for his voice.  Chris played a Pearl Masters drum kit.  We also use a whole load of amazing software plug-ins, but where possible we use real outboard gear.

Lucas: For me the essential piece of equipment specifically for Space Invader is the Line 6 DL4 mk2, I had bought this pedal a couple of days before the jam where we came up with the song. I realised that when I used it on my bass and rapidly changed the tempo of the delay with the tap tempo switch, it made a laser gun type sound which can be heard at the end of each verse on Space Invader.

 

Which of your new album tracks hear you at your a) happiest, b) angriest and c) most reflective?

Chris: I would say the most upbeat track is Hammer, musically and lyrically it has a swagger and that I think is infectious. The most reflective is Lightning, it’s a deeply personal song and I think it’s the emotional core of what the album represents – friendship, love, hope and defiance. I think defiance is a better word than anger with this album; there is anger but it’s channelled into a determination to create and find new ways out of the tumult and darkness. I think Junkies and Black Rock best convey that.

What two things do you hope to have achieved once you have left the stage? 

Chris: a sense of release and to have appreciated being totally in the moment, that’s what performance is to me.

Do you have any favoured stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones etc?

Simon:   It’s not realistic for me to take all my vintage keyboards out live.  Sometimes the Hammond B3 comes with me but for most of the live shows I use the same organ I had when we started PHR; a flight-cased Nord C1, which I use with a selection of overdrive and delay EFX pedals.  I suppose it’s vintage in its own right now, but I still love this organ and it does the job of all my studio organs really well.  I also use a Nord Electro for electric piano and Mellotron sounds.  For bass sounds I use a Roland bass module and for synths I have a digital clone of a MiniMoog.

Lucas: My bass is an Ibanez which I like because it has an EQ and big humbucker pickups on it. There are some older songs in the set (and one on the upcoming album) where I play guitar and Simon plays keyboard bass. My guitar is some kind of early 80s Tokai Strat that has been heavily modded by its many previous owners. For gigs I run both the bass and guitar through all of the pedals on my board. My main bass distortion is the Rat, and I use the Special Cranker from EQD a lot on guitar. The reverbs and delays on the Line 6 DL4 mk2 feature quite a lot on the bass on the new album and now in the live set.

Andy:   I mainly play a Gibson Les Paul but sometimes a Telecaster, through a couple of overdrives, a Tube Screamer distortion a Vox Wha, there’s also a Chorus and a digital delay, all into a Fender Twin Reverb. 

Chris: I’m a drummer, I’ll hit anything

 

Where is your hometown and could you please describe it in five words?

Chris:   Bedford – It’s a well-kept Secret

How do you look after your voices? 

Only the finest whiskey passes these lips.

 

You are given the opportunity to write the score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. Which novel is it and why?

Simon:   We have always felt a lot of our music is suitable for film scores, influenced by films from Antonini, Kubrick and Tarantino.

Chris: The Perfect Golden Circle – Benjamin Myers

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

Lucas: Reviewers like to compare us to other bands, some of these bands that we like the sound of are The Doors, Can, The Stranglers and we have been talking a bit about Funkadelic lately in recent jam sessions.

Simon:  Yes, reviews in the past have often made reference to Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Nick Cave, Queens of The Sone Age… almost all reference The Doors; all these bands have inspired us.  We also take a lot of inspiration from Jazz, Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith.  We also have taken a lot from German avant-garde such as Neu… in fact there are not many genres we don’t take inspiration from.

Chris: I’m loving the album ‘In These Times’ by Makaya McCraven and ‘More Arriving’ by

Sarathy Korwar at the moment

 

What makes Pearl Handled Revolver happy and what makes you unhappy?

Chris: Writing, recording, performing and just hanging out make us happy, the wrong coffee,

bollards and faulty leads make us unhappy

 

Simon:  We are most happy when we are creating, jamming, recording and performing.   There’s a lot that could make us unhappy, but we tend to not talk about those things and prefer to use them to fuel our music.     As for the wrong coffee, that’s never an issue when the boys come over to the studio, it’s the other thing that fuels our music.