Friday, May 30, 2014

Ultra Review Doubleshot - Part 1 - Rainbows Are Free

RAINBOWS ARE FREE: Waves Ahead of the Ocean



   I feel like a kid on Christmas reviewing this one. I just became aware of this f’in great band from Oklahoma, and want to say to them “Where have I been all your life?” Rainbows Are Free is an oddball name for a really oddball band, but these oddballs KICK ASS. Richie Tarver has such an awesome fuzz guitar sound, and the songwriting is really inspired and energetic. And the weirdest and possibly coolest thing about Rainbows Are Free is Brandon Kistler’s vocals. He’s got this Jim Morrison/Jim Dandy thing going on in the sense that his singing is different but totally sincere, so that instead of coming across as strange he leaves the listener marveling at how cool he is. I can “like” tunes when I listen to them on my mp3 player, and within two listens of this album I had every tune on this album marked as a like, and if the machine would let me I would have marked them as “love.” I paid $7 to download this on bandcamp (How cool is bandcamp?). I will give this album so many hours of listening it will end up costing me pennies per hour. I loved the album so much I had to pick up the band’s previous album, “Believers In Medicine”. Equally awesome album which made me wonder why I had never heard of a band this great before. Long story short: if you consider yourself a “stoner rock” fan, Rainbows Are Free are an essential addition to your collection. Definitely heavy but definitely not heavy metal. Hard rock with an emphasis on hard, and a focus on awesome.
"Rainbows Are Free's sonic locus appears on the rock n roll family tree at the point where proto-metal and psychedelia shared a common apocryphal ancestor before branching off into their own distinct lineages" - Richie Tarver. 
What he said. It’s still early, but I can’t imagine this not ending up on my “best of 2014” list.
- ULTRA

Check out:
“The Botanist”
Live: JC Vs. Penicillin / Are You Dead?

RAF is:
Brandon Kistler-Vox

Richie Tarver-Lead Guitar
Chad Hogue- Bass
Bobby Onspaugh-Drums





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