Rainbow Kitten Surprise at the Hammerstein Ballroom

In the Blue Ridge Mountain college town of Boone, North Carolina, two guitar-playing and singing university students, Sam Melo and Darrick "Bozzy" Keller, begin writing and composing music together in 2013. They created a local buzz with both an EP of acoustic music that they recorded in a dorm room and with appearances at open-mic nights at their campus coffee shop. Before one of those gigs, they visited a friend who was being treated for bacterial meningitis in a hospital room; they asked him to name the band, and he responded Rainbow Kitten Surprise, a combination of three words that each sparked good feelings. Over the next year the duo expanded in size and sound by adding three fellow students, lead guitarist Ethan Goodpaster, bassist Charlie Holt, and drummer Jess Haney. The band's third album and first major-label release, How to: Friend, Love, Freefall, was released on April 6, 2018.

Rooted in jangly, harmony-driven folk rock yet inclined towards the adventurous curves of indie-rock, Rainbow Kitten Surprise performed a lively 22-song set of imaginative original music at the Hammerstein Ballroom tonight. Melo's quizzical lyrics sometimes touched on sensitive topics: "Fever Pitch" was inspired by his youth as the child of Pentecostal missionaries in the Dominican Republic; "Holy War" was sparked by North Carolina's constitutional prohibition of same sex marriage; "Hide" was written after he came out publicly as gay. The sunny, joyful presentation of these wordy songs and their curious phrasings (think Milky Chance or Deerhoof) commanded attention. Visually, Melo was a captivating front person, dancing non-stop with his wavy, slithery full-body moves. In the end, it was Melo's strong, soulful intonations matched with the band's inventive arrangements that made Rainbow Kitten Surprise's performance thoroughly magnetic.

Setlist:

1. When It Lands
2. Counting Cards
3. All's Well That Ends
4. Cold Love
5. American Shoes
6. Shameful Company
7. Matchbox
8. Cocaine Jesus
9. Devil Like Me
10. Seven
11. First Class
12. All That and More (Sailboat)
13. Painkillers
14. Holy War
15. No Vacancy
16. It's Called: Freefall
17. That's My Shit
18. Fever Pitch
19. Hide

Encore:

1. Polite Company
2. Recktify
3. Run