Rainbow City Park - ‘Fruitless’
Photo provided by Rainbow City Park
From Northern California, Rainbow City Park have just released their debut EP, Fruitless, so we decided to take a look at two of their tracks from this sonically playful new release.
First up is the dizzying EP title track “Fruitless,” a song that feels like you are being hit by the jaggered, punkish crash of Elastica and the industrial grooves of Garbage. Thrashing with classic, tightly wound indie rock energy, serrated, driving, and in places trippy guitar tones propel the track forward defiantly. All the elements are incredibly slick, intelligently ebbing and flowing from the rolling basslines, metronomic drums and the vocal that teeters between resignation and fury, yet maintains cool, melodically sweet. You just simply get lost in this track from the get go.
“Fruitless” lyrically explores the idea that our best efforts and attempts may not always feel enough, but never provides a resolution or answer on how to solve this. But it doesn’t need to; it doesn’t wallow in the uncertainty; instead, it weaponises it into one all mighty wallop of indie rock. What a tune!
Like an immersive exercise in restraint, Rainbow City Park display their versatility as a group ticking the “fragile” indie folk box with the emotional ballad “Water Under The Bridge.” The track gradually unravels from sparse, intimate textures of fingerpicked acoustic guitar and meditative, ambient layers, into a composition that feels increasingly grand and cinematic. The song, in many ways, bears the hallmarks of Sharon Van Etten rising up atmospherically whilst gracefully capturing emotion in the most refined manner. By the time the crescendo hits all of the hooks are on parade and there is a delightful feeling of catharsis as electric guitars ring out majestically under the stop of the drums.
Steering the composition is a devastatingly tender vocal that drips with pure emotion. Reflecting feelings from quiet resignation to defiance, the performance swells from its hushed beginnings into something that is fuller and soaring.