Following ‘Superstar’ and ‘LOL’, ‘Overtime’ is the third single Rainbow Kitten Surprise are releasing, teasing their first full-length album in six years – Love Hate Music Box, due out 10 May 2024. For followers, this has been an agonisingly lengthy wait. For the band, it has been a interval of battle: psychological well being issues, sickness, tour cancellations, and frontperson Ela Melo’s transition.
Emerging from these trials and tribulations, Rainbow Kitten Surprise is totally different: it’s clear that they’re experimenting with their sound. ‘Overtime’ is much mellower than quite a lot of their discography. It is simple to see the affect of producer Konrad Snyder, who has labored up to now with Noah Kahan and Stephen Sanchez, within the light instrumentals coupled with smooth vocals from Melo, accompanied by Kacey Musgraves. The sounds soften collectively, creating a young and melancholic environment that provides an actual poignancy to the heartfelt lyrics exploring the quiet unhappiness of a relationship that has maybe run its course, although it lingers and blurs traces. Vulnerable is the most effective descriptor for this observe. Melo opens the tune with a tentative query: “When I call you up can I call you love?”. Later on within the refrain, she provides the next: “I love you but it hurts / It’s over and it’s not / I guess it’s overtime then”. Suddenly, painfully, the metaphor of the title falls into place. Overtime – a temporal area past an outlined timescale – embodies the unusual state of after, on this case, after the tip of a relationship. It’s a painful place to be, devoid of solutions and guidelines and a clear-cut manner out. “Isn’t this some shit?” Melo asks, earlier than deciding to “call it what it is”. Rainbow Kitten Surprise has an actual expertise for imbuing slightly easy lyrics with a deep sense of pathos: there’s something extremely touching right here, sure to resonate with most listeners on a private degree.
Melo has some of the distinctive voices I’ve ever heard. She has a gorgeous, wealthy tone with an aurally satisfying twang that rushes to the fore, overlaying the instrumentals. Seven-time Grammy-winner Musgraves is ready to maintain her personal for the second verse, with a breathy, candy and clear voice that provides a transferring child-like high quality to the tune. The spotlight of the observe is when Melo and Musgrave sing the refrain collectively, their voices weaving collectively seamlessly to create a pleasantly soothing and full sound. Musgraves is Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s first characteristic, and although the mix of the North Carolina-born quartet’s indie-rock and her folk-pop appears unusual on paper, it feels prefer it was meant to be.
Ela Melo defined how the collaboration took place: “I really believe in serendipity. I wrote ‘Overtime’ on a Saturday, met Kacey the following Monday, and got up the nerve to ask if she’d be down to lay down some vocals for it on Tuesday. It’s the first time we’ve had a feature on an RKS song and we’re still pinching ourselves that it’s her.”
Though some followers have criticised the band for what they understand to be a transfer in direction of the mainstream, I might argue that although ‘Overtime’ is a recent hybridisation of style and sound, it nonetheless incorporates the essence of Rainbow Kitten Surprise as a band who’ve at all times discovered concord in unpredictable locations, teaming robust, effervescent instrumentals with earnest but poetic songwriting to create eccentric masterpieces. On their official Instagram, Rainbow Kitten Surprise have fun that their new album has “allowed [them] to evolve as musicians and humans and dive into new sounds and ideas”. If ‘Overtime’ is something to go by, Love Hate Music Box guarantees to be an thrilling listening expertise.
Words by Jui Zaveri
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