Babe Rainbow
Double Whammy, Auckland, NZ
Sunday, April 13th
Salty-blonde heads, alien-inspired sunglasses, and the smell of incense mingled with raging body odour – clear signs you’re in the right place for a Babe Rainbow show.
On an autumnal Sunday night, Auckland’s Double Whammy became a portal to the halcyon days of “turn on, tune in, drop out.” The boys of Byron Bay carried themselves with their quintessential carefree haze, perfectly in sync with the crowd. Even in the flesh, the band members had an infectious psychedelic energy that made happiness feel abundant to all.
Emanating a healthy dose of nostalgia, Babe Rainbow exist for today’s people who believe they were born into the wrong music generation.
“I want to hang out with them,” one crowd member said – and truly, the band make you want to quit your day job, join the road trip, and dissolve into their rainbow-coloured world.
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Lead vocalist Angus Dowling, his hair in two pigtails, danced around and made all sorts of sound effects with his mouth on the microphone – mannerisms of a small child, but magical nonetheless. Watching up close, you realise many of the whimsical sounds on their records are just breath and mouth.
Their performance was like tapping into some inner child realm: playful, sweet, and forever stuck in a world of sunshine and rainbows. A dreamlike escape for 21st-century listeners.
The trippy tunes and plethora of changing instrumentals in “LONG LIVE THE WILDERNESS”, a track off their latest album, Slipper imp and shakaerator, made it feel like everyone in the room was jumping on jelly. “Like Cleopatra” and “Super Ego” made the crowd feel like they were skipping through a sunflower field, or floating atop smooth, glassy waves on a longboard.
Speaking of which, the band had left behind the waves of Raglan (where they had played the night before) to be here for tonight’s show.
“Do you want to hear a French song?” Dowling asked in his strong Australian accent, peering over at his special guest, Camille Jansen. While he played around, taking the piss, Jansen held a straight face and raised the roof with her high-octane French vocals – her honey-glazed harmonies adding a little extra magic to the already multidimensional brownie batter of Babe Rainbow’s sounds.
Credit: Nico Rose
If there had been a silliness Richter Scale in the room, it would have blown up. Each band member giggled, laughed, spun about on the stage, and even played guitar back-to-front at one point. The crowd mirrored their goofy energy as they sang and bounced along.
“'[Secret Enchanted] Broccoli Forest’!” someone yelled.
“Not just yet,” Dowling responded.
“This is our theme song. We wrote it when we were seventeen,” Dowling said, as the giddy melodic foundation of “Peace Blossom Boogy” started up. “Let’s go to Venice (da,dada-da) / Man that can move is what a girl wants.”
It was clear it was the final night of Babe Rainbow’s tour, and they weren’t here to be overly serious. Yet, their live sound felt close to cosmic perfection – somewhere in what you could call the rainbow realm.
Just as it seemed the night was over, a few heads poked out from backstage. One by one, they returned to the stage for two final songs. The only thing missing from the night was a visualiser. Their music screams colour and swirling psychedelic shapes, but aside from Dowling’s vibrant stage personality, there weren’t any.
As the show ended, the crowd drifted into the cool Auckland evening with a slight hallucinogenic spring in their step.
Find Babe Rainbow’s upcoming shows here.
