Rainbow Ruckus 4/22: Vandoliers, Paisley Fields, Alabama Shakes, and More!
This week's Rainbow Ruckus features trans defiance, crooners about bottoming, psychedelic protest music, Butthole Surfers covers, and a reminder: hands off the hat.
Every week, Rainbow Rodeo brings you the best new queer country music! Listen to this playlist on Tidal! Thanks to Elliott for making a parallel list on Apple Music! Missed a week? TA Inskeep is generously keeping an archive of all music featured on this Spotify playlist.
Please note: we are no longer updating our Spotify playlist.
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For Trans Day of Visibility, I wanted to do something a little different. This week, we're featuring a brilliant new song from artist Light Bird, as well as highlighting songs from some of the albums we've reviewed by trans artists this year.
- Touring while trans has been an important topic in my recent interviews. Vandoliers broach the subject in their music with their trademark warmth and ass-kicking punk rock sneer. Jenni Rose's rasp is simultaneously defiant and grief-stricken: we shouldn't have to do these things, but Jenni isn't hiding.
- Andrew Sa takes on the role of cowboy crooner with "Under You." The song is a simple, sexy love song ideal for the idle summer afternoons Sa sings softly about here. Sa whisks us away with this timeless classic of queer love.
- Thank goodness the Alabama Shakes are back. "American Dream" is a protest song that only the Shakes could give us: a somber realization of reality, couched in a dreamy composition that frees us from our own limitations. And, as always with Brittany Howard's songwriting, the lyrics get right to the point, even as the music is dazzling.
- Paisley Fields delights us with a '70s country come-on with "Hands Off the Hat." As delightful as the song is, it is in fact a reprieve from the blistering period-piece anger from his upcoming album Are U Mad At Me, a '70s country disco venting of queer rage. Here, though, Paisley is confident and sassy – and wants you to know he's the real deal.
- S.G. Goodman gifts us with her version of the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper." The queer romance roadmap of the first verse feels portentous in her hands, rather than flippant. Goodman surfaces the song's mysterious undertones while maintaining its confident, hypnotic groove. Goodman and her band give the song weight, asking us to find something deeper in the stumbling travails of ordinary people.
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