News Fantasy Rainbow: ‘Even If Everyone Hates My Album, It’s Something I’m Proud Of’

“I probably dropped out a little prematurely,” says 19-year-old Oliver Catt, the man behind Fantasy Rainbow who quit his first year politics course in Manchester to pursue a life as a musician back in April. “But it’s not like I sat around on my arse saying ‘Oh, I’m gonna record some songs’. I’ve actually done some stuff, so I’m not an archetypal drop out.”

‘Some stuff’ he certainly has done. Barely a year since starting things as Fantasy Rainbow – his slacker, jangly, retro pop solo project – Richmond, Yorkshire-born Oliver managed to convince a label to fly him out to America to record his debut.

“It was a really weird coincidence,” he says, describing how the album – due to be released in November through Heist Or Hit Records – came to be. “I was really drunk one night at Deaf Institute in Manchester and Ed [Spear, who produced the album] just wandered in drunk. He said, ‘You should come out to Tennessee to do an album’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, cool’, thinking it’d never happen.”

But then it did. “It was f**king nuts,” Oliver says of his label’s support for the idea. “They pretty much bundled me on to a plane and told me to come back with an album. I was riddled with anxiety. Every official I saw I thought they were gonna throw me out of the country, [although] I didn’t feel much pressure about recording – I’d been living with the songs for a long time and I knew how good Ed was, so I was pretty confident we could make a killer record.”

While you might expect someone in his position to be more concerned about the musical pressure on him rather than the logistics of the trip, Oliver’s confidence is understandable; starting Fantasy Rainbow at the age of 18, he quickly attracted attention. A handful of strong EPs and lots of live shows later, and he seems to have grown rightly assured of his abilities.

With earlier recordings drawing comparisons to the likes of Deerhunter and Wavves, Oliver feels his sound on the album is a slight departure. “I was listening to ‘This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About’ by Modest Mouse a lot before I recorded the album,” he says, hinting at how the finished product might sound. “I’m really happy with it, which is a nice position to be in, ‘cause even if everyone hates it it’s something I’m proud of.”

It takes a lot of faith for a label to pay for a 19-year-old to fly thousands of miles to record an album, but with Fantasy Rainbow you get the sense that might just pay off.

Fantasy Rainbow’s debut album will be released in November via Heist Or Hit.