Babe Rainbow Share New Song & Video 'Ready for Tomorrow'

Babe Rainbow is making music vividly respectful of the past, whilst emphatically living in the present; a confluence of sounds and sentiments from a place between yesterday and tomorrow.

Sharing the euphoric Jaden Smith collab "Your Imagination" back in March, "Ready For Tomorrow" is the prophetic new single, both taken from new album Changing Colours released next week on 14th May via the band's own label Eureka Music through AWAL for digital, and Flightless Records for vinyl worldwide.

"Ready for Tomorrow" is a contradiction of singer Angus Dowling's disco flavor up the front and Cool Breeze folk picking guitar style as its anchor. It finds the band celebrating but in a mood.

He says, "it's about 21st-century life, finding relief from the stress of both the future and the past. It is about Persephone running into her mother Demeter's comforting arms"

Keeping it theirs and local, "Ready for Tomorrow" is accompanied by a video shot by band confidante and former bass player Jordan Malane, around the local village watering hole, the Eltham Hotel.

As is befitting for a story with its origins in Australia's Byron Bay, the three core members of Babe Rainbow met in the surf. Angus Dowling, Jack Crowther, and Elliot O'Reilly had barely dried off when they had formed the makings of the band. They worked together as apprentices to English farmer John Cults to record their first music.

Like-minded souls soon caught their music on the wind: Eric at Flightless Records, the label set up to release King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's hefty catalog of records, welcomed the band into the family, releasing Babe Rainbow's early string of singles. Stu from King Gizz soon offered to produce their debut album and they were away. Once Danger Mouse released their sounds in the US on his 30th Century Records imprint, the word was well and truly out.

The relaxed nature of their sound belies their work ethic, as Babe Rainbow released three albums in just as many years. The eponymous debut, their sophomore effort 'Double Rainbow' and 2019's 'Today'. Piquing the interest of discerning music heads around the world, they sold out the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, Point Éphémère in Paris, Elsewhere in New York, Café V Lese in Prague, Monk in Rome, the Crocodile in Seattle, and the Lodge Room in Los Angeles.

Last year, and with Jack's baby brother Miles Myjavaec now the permanent drummer, Babe Rainbow decamped to Topanga Canyon to start work on album number four, with regarded producer Kyle Mullarky, who was shaping similar sounds on the West Coast. Not surprisingly their music had already caught the ears of L.A's tight-knit psychedelic music community, who had invited Babe Rainbow into their fold.

Filled with inspiration and mountain air, the band returned to the Music Farm in Byron Bay to finish the record, again teaming with producer Wayne Connelly, who previously helmed classic records by The Vines, Neil Finn, and You Am I.

The resultant record, 'Changing Colours', is a leap forward in every way. Babe Rainbow have consolidated all that's wonderful about their previous music and pushed further in each direction.

Think the type of music that was floating down from Laurel Canyon in the early 70s, as Crosby, Stills, and Nash waited for Young to wander back from the forest. Think The Beach Boys after they had packed up the surfboards, ditched their LA label, and moved to the hills to practice TM and smoke Californian grass. Think Joni.

The track "California" is proof positive that there is always room for another classic paean to the great state, especially one that captures the sunshine and sense of space, as well as Babe Rainbow, have done here. If James Taylor released this song in 1972, it would have sold a million.

"Thinking Like A River" floats downstream for a languorous, luxurious three minutes. Or is it half an hour? Time becomes irrelevant here.

It can't all be head music, though. "Ready For Tomorrow" is driven by disco-lite drums, with jazzy guitars weaving between the beats as if leaping a jump rope. Rainbow Rock borrows a baggy beat from the bands of Manchester and drenches it in mystical Byron Bay energy, a phased-out vocal and jazzy guitar licks uproots it from Earth and propels it towards the satellites. It's quite a trip - and you can dance to it.

Elsewhere, there's the island-inspired rhythms of current single "Zeitgeist", and stoned singalong "New Zealand Spinach". The dippy Donovan vibes of "Curl Free", and gentle "Smile", like a cork bobbing on the ocean complete the trip.

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Photo Credit: Marclay Heriot