Last year, the British dance musician known as Fred Again.. put out a feeler to the Nashville-based alt-rock band Rainbow Kitten Surprise about a possible collaboration. Ela Melo, who’s fronted Rainbow Kitten Surprise since she and guitarist Darrick Keller formed the group over a decade ago as students at North Carolina’s Appalachian State University, was intrigued by the invitation. “It’s brilliant music,” she says of Fred Again..’s soulful electronica.
So the singer and songwriter began sending ideas to the artist’s team. “They’d be like, ‘That’s not it, but keep sending stuff,’” Melo recalls. Before long, she and her bandmates had written nine songs, then 32, then 48. “Eventually, we ended up with close to 160 songs because it just felt so good to write,” she says.
What happened with the Fred Again.. feature? “I don’t know,” Melo says with a laugh. “If he’s still interested, we’re still here.”
One thing that happened was a new Rainbow Kitten Surprise album: “Bones,” which the band said Wednesday will come out Sept. 26 from Atlantic Records. A 10-track collection produced by Jay Joyce, it’s a quick and dirty follow-up to last year’s “Love Hate Music Box,” which ran for 22 tracks — including “Overtime,” with Kacey Musgraves — and which took the band six years to complete. “This one kind of just came pouring out,” Melo says from upstate New York on a recent afternoon between tour dates. The sound is raw yet tuneful, with scratchy electric guitars and whomping live drums in place of the synth-ier, more intricately layered productions of “Love Hate Music Box.”
Rounded out by guitarist Ethan Goodpaster and drummer Jess Haney, RKS had its rowdy live show in mind as it worked on “Bones,” according to Melo. “It was the idea that we gotta be able to play this stuff — not build it and play it later, but play it right out of the gate,” the singer says. (Next month, the band will log its fourth sold-out show at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre and perform at the annual Ohana festival in Dana Point.) Melo wrote many of the LP’s songs on guitar, she says, which provided “a different energy” compared to writing on keyboards as she did for “Love Hate Music Box” and 2018’s “How To: Friend, Love, Freefall.”
The straightforward sound is matched by lyrics Melo describes as “way more direct” than RKS’ earlier stuff. “It’s a spill-your-guts-out record,” she says, adding that for every song, she’d write a first verse, then ad lib the rest in the studio. In more than a few tunes, she sings about how relationships are affected by drinking and drugs. “It’s interesting what comes out on the mic,” says the frontwoman, who says she’s been sober for about 10 months. “I feel like it’s channeling some energy that I don’t take part in anymore, though I do have fond memories of getting stoned on the Parkway in Boone, North Carolina.”
What inspired her life change? “I noticed that when I drank, I could be a little meaner — just say things I wouldn’t normally say,” she replies. “I realized I want control of that, and anything that removes some of that control is a no-go. It applies to music, as well. Being as regulated as you can possibly be opens you up to — this gets a little heady — but to other frequencies. Then you have the largest bandwidth to communicate your truth — maybe the truth — into a microphone.”
With its fuzzy textures and unruly tempos, “Bones” arrives as rock seems to be resurging after years of domination by rappers and pop stars. Melo has no grand theories as to why, but she knows exactly when she started to believe that rock is back. “It was the opening track of ‘Guts’ by Olivia Rodrigo,” she says of the former Disney kid’s “All-American Bitch.” “That kick drum hit me, and I was like, ‘Ah man, I don’t need an 808 and all the bells and whistles — I just need old-school guitars, bass and drums.’ That s— hits.”
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