Ratboys – “Go Outside”

Ratboys – “Go Outside”

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Ratboys’ Printer’s Devil. To commemorate the occasion, the endlessly hooky Chicago pop-rockers released a new song for their Patreon subscribers. Today, the track is out in the world.

“Go Outside” leans hard into the twang in singer Julia Steiner’s voice — as in, it’s a straight-up country song, with acoustic strums, shuffling drums, and abundant pedal steel. Perhaps she was influenced by her work on the new Wild Pink album? Steiner’s lyrics are wonderfully simple yet evocative here, from the idyllic nature scenes (“I wanna lay down in the sand/ I wanna show up at the shoreline and drink Lake Michigan”) to the deeply romantic conclusion (“I wanna love you ’til the end/ I wanna float off with the angels and pick a fight and win/ I wanna love you ’til the end”). They should make a whole album like this.

In a press release, Steiner writes, “We wrote this song on a whim when we were home in between tours in April 2019. It’s this carefree and wistful, totally innocent song about wanting to travel and spend time with loved ones. We didn’t realize that we wouldn’t be able to do either of those things before long.” Hear “Go Outside” below.

Ratboys have shared a steady stream of one-offs in the year since Printer’s Devil, mostly via compilations.

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