Heavy psych rockers Rainbows Are Free’s latest album Silver and Gold is rich with shiny metal forged to bend the mind, but lead single “Sleep” mines anxieties at the forefront of the brain.
“It is pretty straightforward,” vocalist Brandon Kistler said, explaining the song’s meaning. “We’ve gotta hold it together, and sometimes it’s hard to sleep.”
“Sleep” describes the troubled headspace that comes from restless nights and the fear of waking up to something worse: “Product of the times / Product of my mind / Distracted, divided, overwhelmed, still fighting / Sometimes I care / Easier when I don’t.”
Kistler said concerns about modern society and the future for his children inspired the lyric “We can’t let it break, no it can’t be broke.”
Rohitash Rao directed the stop-motion video accompanying “Sleep,” an expressionist nightmare of clay tentacles, dragons, bloodshot eyes and countless other oddities and Rainbows Are Free “Easter eggs.”
“We didn’t want it to be too literal, and he liked that and he ran with it,” Kistler said. “We really gave him a lot of license, and he delivered.”
Rao’s immediate connection with the song helped sway the band to select it as the lead single.
“You just never know what people are going to respond to,” lead guitarist and backing vocalist Richie Tarver said. “We’ve been doing this for long enough where we’re probably in a bit of an echo chamber with our own music, so it’s nice to get an outside perspective.”
Though it’s arguably one of the heaviest songs lyrically on the album, musically, Tarver said “Sleep” offers only a taste of heavier moments to come.
“I think it’s a good appetizer,” Tarver said. “I think it’ll allow people who may not be familiar with us access to some of not our more challenging, but maybe our more adventurous song writing. I think it’s a good introduction for people who might not have ever heard of us, and then once they’re in, they’re a captive audience and we can unleash some of the more dangerous moments — darker, more adventurous songwriting, nontraditional song structures, stuff like that.”
The song is not inspired by stoner metal band Sleep, but Tarver joked the association with a well-known artist couldn’t hurt.
“I don’t know if you’ve listened to the next track on the album,” Tarver said. “It’s called ‘Taylor Swift.’”
There’s no actual Swiftie-baiting on the album, but “Running With a Friend of the Devil” combines Van Halen and Grateful Dead song titles without really sounding like either band. However, Rainbows Are Free count Van Halen as an influence.
“I like a little play on words, and we gotta have one ridiculous song title on every album,” Kistler said. “I’ll give Diamond Dave some love.”
Second single and album closer “The Gift” features a riff reconstructed from a backward loop of a song from Rainbows Are Free’s 2019 album Head Pains and draws inspiration from fellow OKC band Chat Pile.
“It’s like orders of magnitude heavier than ‘Sleep,’” Tarver said.
The band describes “Dirty,” meanwhile, as “disco-cocaine-surf-rock,” and third single “Solar Flare” orbits Black Sabbath’s disarmingly mellow “Planet Caravan” for a while before blasting off into a blistering scorcher.
Magical strategy
Produced by the band with Trent Bell at Bell Labs Recording Studio in Norman, Silver and Gold is Rainbows Are Free’s fourth studio album and second release through label Ripple Music, following 2023’s Heavy Petal Music, recorded live at Summer Breeze Music Festival in Norman in 2021.
“It was our first show back from the lockdown,” Tarver said. “We had no plans on it being a live record.”
Kistler added, “We didn’t even know we were being recorded, first of all.”
But when Carl Amburn played his recording for the band, Tarver said they “were just shocked that it was as good as it was.”
“We just kind of let it rip, and that night was just so magical for, not only for us, but for everyone else,” Tarver said. “We were pretty thirsty for live music. Getting to do that in our hometown, in Norman, I think it’s a moment we’ll all have etched in our brains for a long time.”
They were also surprised when their new label wanted to release it.
“But it actually turned out to be a winning strategy because the idea was kind of a one-two punch,” Tarver said. “We released the live record, so for anyone who’s never heard of us, it does have this kind of greatest-hits-complete-discography vibe from the last 15 years. So that reaches a new audience, and they’re primed for the next studio release.
“We kind of look at that record as a culmination of that period of the band. It was a little sampling from every album, two or three songs from every album, and we were able to put that behind us and now move forward.”
Fans familiar with the originals may be surprised by some of the versions on Heavy Petal Music.
“Structurally, they’re all the same, but with the addition of the synth,” Tarver said.
Synth player Josh Elam added, “There’s some different parts, though. [Drummer] Bobby [Onspaugh] is playing some different stuff. [Rhythm guitarist] Joey [Powell] is playing some different stuff.”
Kistler said, “And there’s some tempo changes from the originals.”
Tarver laughed and said, “So they’re completely different songs.”
Elam, who joined Rainbows Are Free in 2019, is the most recent addition to the 17-year-old band, and the older songs on Heavy Petal Music didn’t originally have synth.
“With that album, with those being old classics … it was an exercise of trying to come up with parts that fit without ruining the original balance,” Elam said.
Tarver said the current version of Rainbows Are Free is “the ultimate lineup … in terms of our chops and our chemistry and everything,” and the band agreed Silver and Gold reflects that.
“With this new album, it’s a lot more cohesive because the synth is part of the writing process,” Elam said. “It definitely has helped evolve the sound into something new and inspiring.”
Silver and Gold is available for purchase at ripplemusic.bandcamp.com.
Rainbows Are Free Silver and Gold Release Party
Saturday, March 8
The Blue Note
2408 N. Robinson Ave.
okcbluenote.com
This article appears in The OG Food Issue 2025.