Be No Rain

To understand Be No Rain’s lovelorn take on pop music you must first know where it was made. A south London studio decked out with disco balls and fairy lights, in many ways, looks exactly how the record sounds. Kitsch and camp in places, but unashamedly itself. It was in this utopia that Sam Frankl, who records as Be No Rain, got to work tirelessly distilling ideas over the course of a decade into a shape that represented his eclectic mind. The key to grasping debut album Strawberry Backstory’s purpose, Frankl explains, is not taking it too seriously but knowing it is “a place to connect to emotion in its purest form".

Frankl soon created a persona through which he could express himself freely. Enter Be No Rain. “It felt like there needed to be a character that could be as flamboyant as I wanted to be and remove the constraints that being a human leaves you with,” Frankl explains. Be No Rain is lovelorn and confused, locked in an endless cycle of youth and heartbreak. “It’s about being trapped into that infinity loop of emotions,” he adds.

There’s no greater setting for a lovestruck teenager whose emotions threaten to run over at any moment than the high school prom. The pageantry of the annual event provides Be No Rain’s visual basis, both in music videos and live shows. “Remembering this endless cycle of heartbreak is a hallucinatory experience.” In Strawberry Backstory Frankl has created the perfect musical accompaniment to taking that trip.