Ratboys - GN (Topshelf Records) 2017
7
Featuring influences from late-90s Sheryl Crow guitar driven style, Jenny Lewis hearted vocals and Bon Iver’s layered arrangements, Ratboys’ sophomore album, GN, is sonically bold and an intensely bittersweet indie rock flick. Pivotal tracks like “Crying” that talk about the survival story of Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson from a first-person perspective or “Peter” that reflects on the life of a feral child in Germany who was eventually adopted by the King of England enhance the narrative style into their self-proclaimed “post-country” elegant minimalist sound. It’s impossible to not feel overwhelmed by the constant sense of lost and found, highs and lows, that gently slow burn the listener. An album not for the faint of heart or soul.