This Is One of Denver’s Best New Shoegaze Groups

What started as a surf-punk project between two guitarists turned into one of the best new shoegaze bands of the year.

Denver musicians Phoebe Rankin and Max Murray know each other well, having played together in several other projects over the past decade, but their latest endeavor, ratstallion, was truly a happy accident.

“We got together to work on this surf band. After about a month of writing, I don’t even know what we were trying to write ended up as. It was like Red Hot Chili Peppers butt rock. We were like, ‘We fucking hate this,’” Rankin explains.  

“We were like, ‘Well, maybe let’s just try not to try.’ We just ended up writing shoegaze. We were like, ‘Damn, that is just what we are good at. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fuck with branching out too much.’ The vision was somewhere, but not in our hands.”

But the muse steered them in the right direction.

“There was a big ethos, too, of we wanted to write a lot and experiment with writing quickly and producing rapidly and see if we could do the Turnstile thing of making a lot of stuff,” Murray adds. “It felt like that was a genre of music we could do that with and a community that would be really excited with it. We found that to be the case. It’s a really engaging group of people that is drawn to that type of music, as well.”

The duo quickly recruited bassist Lenny Torres and drummer Dan Paulin.

“I was instantly hooked,” says Paulin, who also plays in POST/WAR with Murray.  “A lot of the lyricism is a really cool part of this band, and a lot more focused on the heavy sonic elements.”

The debut EP, Sisyphus Happy, released independently in November, followed. The six tracks included on the introduction hit somewhere between straight-forward spiraling shoegaze and popped-up blackened new-wave.  

“The whole EP reads like a maladaptive daydream,” Rankin says. “That’s the narrative of it.”

A seventeen-minute daydream, to be exact. Rankin’s hush-harsh vocal delivery whispers and wails throughout to beautifully nightmarish results, particularly on such songs as “Pit” and “7^th.” “Termite” and “Eye” are more upbeat melodically but are equally devastating lyrically — a common thread throughout Sisyphus Happy.  

“It reaches a little bit of an epoch in ‘Termite,’ which is about being an OCD girly and losing touch with what the reality of the situation is versus how it distorts through a kaleidoscopic lens of your own thoughts and ruminating things over and over,” Rankins breaks down.

“While ‘Eye’ is about my intrusive thoughts about walking past this gross water on a bridge and being like, ‘Throw yourself in, that would be kind of fun. What if?’” she continues. “It’s getting in touch with that feeling.”

Torres further bears the bones of ratstallion.

“Our music has a certain sense of existential dread, but there’s a camaraderie that we all accept a certain degree of it,” he says. “Yes, there’s a lot of not-so-good existential things happening, but I’m not alone in that feeling.”

So far, through local gigs and house shows, it’s proved to be a hit with Front Range fans, somewhat to the surprise of the quartet.

“Shows are like booking themselves, which is really a first for me in bands,” Rankin admits. “This band has just been easy. We’ve been really blown away by the reception. The local youths are coming out of the woodwork.”

The next ratstallion house show is set for New Year’s Eve with Denver pop-punk crew Relate., but more bands could be added. The location is secret, so follow ratstallion for more info and an official invite.

Gamer nerds out there might be thinking that name is a World of Warcraft reference, but it’s way more obscure.

“It’s a term me and my childhood friend came up with. We thought we invented it. It’s a term that we came up with for if you see a guy who’s hot, but at second glance, kind of ugly, that’s a ratstallion,” Rankin shares, adding she discovered the WoW character after choosing the moniker.  “At least now we have an out and I don’t have to explain that every time.”

The more you know. With new music in the works and plans for a spring tour, ratstallion is sure to get some well-deserved double looks of its own moving forward.

“It’s been about writing things that people not only feel connected to and familiar with but also they’re a part of it,” Murray says.

“Wanting for people to connect whatever it is they’re feeling or whatever they’re needing to work out or process to what we’re doing, even if it’s not the same thing,” he concludes. “We want it to be a shared experience.”