Rainbow Kitten Surprise Gets Back to the ‘Bones’ of Their Sound on Energetic New Album: ‘We Went Down the Rabbit Hole’

When indie stone set Rainbow Kitten Surprise returned aft six years distant successful 2024, fans weren’t definite what to think.

The set — which had go known since its genesis for its folk-meets-rock-meets-pop dependable — threw a curveball astatine their assemblage with Love Hate Music Box, an expansive, genre-fluid LP that upended not lone the group’s established sound, but their lineup arsenic well, with bassist Charlie Holt exiting the radical owed to originative differences with pb vocalist Ela Melo. Critics praised the group’s experimental comeback. But arsenic Melo describes it, fans weren’t arsenic sold.

“We had been pursuing these sounds for truthful long,” Melo tells Billboard over Zoom. Sitting connected her screen-in structure and dressed successful a fluorescent blonde wig, a achromatic choker necklace and a T-shirt, she takes a resistance from her cigaret and sighs. “Then erstwhile we made Love Hate Music Box, it felt similar the fans told us, ‘Okay, well, we’re not acceptable for this.'”

When it came clip to commencement reasoning astir their adjacent project, the quartet recovered themselves backmost astatine the drafting board, looking for thing that could springiness them an accidental to research the caller stations they occupied — Melo came retired publically arsenic a trans pistillate successful 2022 — portion inactive giving the fans what they wanted.

Bones, Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s 5th workplace album, manages to instrumentality that landing. With a choky runtime and 10 freewheeling caller songs, the set embraces the vigor of its beloved unrecorded amusement passim the caller project, arsenic the members jam retired successful the workplace portion riffing disconnected of 1 different to marque a collaborative, occasionally improvisational project. This time, Melo says, the extremity was overmuch simpler than reintroducing themselves to the world: “We truly conscionable said, ‘Let’s marque a bully stone album.”

Below, Melo breaks down however Rainbow Kitten Surprise created their caller album, wherefore galore of the album’s lyrics were off-the-cuff advertisement libs, and however her modulation has changed her attack to performance.

First off, congratulations connected the caller medium Bones. How are you feeling astir this astir being successful the hands of your fans? 

It’s beauteous incredible. We started moving connected the demos for it successful June past year, and astatine the time, I retrieve we were scheduled to get successful with Jay [Joyce, the album’s enforcement producer] successful March [of this year], and it was conscionable like, “Well, that’s everlastingly away,” and present present we are. It’s conscionable breathtaking to spot thing that started truthful small, adjacent sonically, go truthful big. Just to spot it travel to beingness has been cool. Usually, medium cycles for america — adjacent connected the shorter extremity of things — thin to beryllium 2 oregon 3 years. Obviously, Love Hate was a batch longer than that, but adjacent so, it’s conscionable similar seeing thing travel fundamentally into afloat fruition successful a year. It’s precise fast.

Yeah, it feels similar Bones came unneurotic lightning accelerated by RKS’ ain merchandise pattern, whereas Love Hate Music Box came unneurotic aft a six-year hiatus. What astir this medium made its speedy merchandise necessary?

I mean, we enactment it retired conscionable astir arsenic accelerated arsenic we could, but that’s existent for astir music. Most of the clip it hits the statement and past there’s, like, different six months of prep that goes astir it to merchandise the happening — that’s conscionable the world that the manufacture takes a batch of time, due to the fact that you gotta people vinyl and stuff.

But arsenic acold arsenic what was really antithetic betwixt the past tally and this run, determination was conscionable an excitement, I think. I astir felt similar I was explaining myself connected this record. It felt similar [the fans] were telling us, “Wait, you conscionable took six years off, and past you came with thing that was really different. That’s cool, but like, what happened?”...