It’s a question that has stumped scholars for centuries: How do you follow up a “murder country rock opera” concept album about a star-crossed vampire and a time-traveler—itself a follow-up to a previous concept album about a “witch whose powers are rendered useless when a demon appears in their home having been paid to capture them”?
If you’re Milwaukee band Rat Bath, you start over from scratch.
“After the release of our ‘murder country rock opera’ Call Me A Monster last year, it felt time for a fresh start,” Rat Bath singer Fred Kenyon tells us. (The previous concept album was 2022’s Rat From Hell.) “So in the last few days of 2023 we came to together and asked each other, ‘If we all met today and started a band, what would it sound like?’ Thus initiated the rebirth, or ‘rat-birth,’ as we call it, of Rat Bath.”
The rat-birthed Rat Bath will make its recorded debut on the six-song Can’t Stand The Thought Of Us Ever Being Apart, due Friday, September 6. A release show will follow at X-Ray Arcade on Saturday, September 7. Lung, Bug Moment, Noun, and Garden Home will play in support. Tickets are on sale NOW.
So if the members of Rat Bath met today and started a band, what would it sound like?
“We aren’t entirely sure what to call the new sound, but it has strong grunge and emo sensibilities while maintaining our trademark style of dynamic emotional storytelling,” Kenyon says.
Indeed, Can’t Stand The Thought‘s first single, the surprisingly delicate “You Sly Dog, You Got Me Monologuing,” is a bit of a musical departure for the formerly cowpunk/”y’allternative” band:
The same is true for the crunchy and confessional (and delightfully titled) “Idk Guys…Does This EP Even Pass The Bechdel Test?” Listen to that track now, only on Milwaukee Record:
“The title is a bit of an inside joke,” Kenyon says. “We joked about whether or not the EP would pass the Bechdel test if we put another break-up song on it. This has been my favorite song ever since day one because it’s a total earworm, but also because the break-up in question was one that scared me for so long that I never in 10 years wrote a single song about it. There’s something cathartic about finally being able to sing about something after an entire decade muffling the pain.”
And never fear, Rat Bath heads: Can’t Stand The Thought may not involve demons or time travelers, but it’s still something of a concept album.
“For me personally, this EP was an avenue back to my true self,” Kenyon says. “I had felt lost in the fiction of our previous releases and ultimately realized the inevitable ways in which my lyricism suffered when trying to create a canon. In this EP I appear as a different age in each track, reliving events of my life with the same raw emotion as when they occurred while reflecting with newfound prospective. I think with my lyrics and substantial musical influence from Rosie, Cora, and Nikki, this may be our most authentic release to date.”
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