How ratbag built a nightmarish universe through music

The chronic frustration of an adolescence spent in suburbia is a theme that generation after generation of musicians have explored – each etching a slightly modernised take into the musical canon. There are a few overarching themes that tend to remain: a desire to break away from mundanity, feeling downtrodden by a political system that chooses to overlook the needs of young people and being lit up by fleeting yet all-encompassing first encounters with love. Yet for those coming of age in the 2020s, there’s perhaps a greater sense of urgency – having emerged from a locked-down teenagehood into a world eerily unrecognisable from how it was before.

It’s this frantic energy that propels New Zealand artist ratbag’s debut EP, why aren’t you laughing?, released at the tailend of last year, where very little of her immediate surroundings of Auckland can penetrate a heavily curated scrapbook of influences forged from years pouring over art in her bedroom. Here, the creepy-cosiness of Where The Wild Things Are meets the angsty, tormented punk of The Cure beneath her own horror-inspired universe conjured from what began as biro scrawlings in her school notebook margins.

Followed up by new single “pinky boy”, ratbag’s debut record is the first look into her nightmarish world, where inner anxieties are personified as a Gorillaz-esque fictional band, with each member representing a different facet of her personality. There’s Deemo, the bassist who channels her need to be alone, keyboardist Fritz who embodies her occasional frantic happiness, Eugene the drummer who, fittingly, represents anger and the guitarist Slug who symbolises disgust. They’re brought to life, along with the rest of her creepy, alternate world, through a series of glitchy animations shared on her socials and the sludgy watercolours drooping into each other on the EP’s self-designed cover art. This decision to combine her love for music and art, she tells Dazed, was the final catalyst to becoming ratbag. “That’s when everything fell into place,” she says. “I realised that I had my art over here and I had my music over here, and I’d always had the impression that I had to leave them separated. One day I thought ‘Why not have a world where they coexist and I can just keep building more and more?’. I just want to be as creative as I can all the time, so why not bring both mediums together?.” 

Alongside “pinky boy”, ratbag has announced two headline shows in Australia this October. Ahead of those, we get to know ratbag through her fictional band, the visuals that inspired her, and the contents of her notes app.

Congratulations on the EP! Where does the title why aren’t you laughing? come from?

ratbag: It comes from a place of dark comedy. A lot of the stuff I write is witty in that I might write a song about a murder, and there’s always a punchline to the song. I think a lot of my music carries a dark comedy vibe to it, so why aren’t you laughing? is kind of like: look at my content, look at the darkness of my visuals. Why are you not laughing about it?

You explore a little bit of that darkness through your band members. What made you want to explore these particular aspects of yourself?

ratbag: If you were to get my brain and split me up into four sections, each section would be a monster. These are the four sides of me, so I decided to split my personality up, dive into each side and create characters for them to show what it looks like in my head and bring it to life a bit. When I look at them, I can see a lot of my past art, but they are all new in the sense that they didn’t exist before I started creating this world.

On ‘dead end kids’, you’re talking about feeling stuck within a political system and frustrated with those in power. How was it for you to explore these more political themes within this fictional universe?

ratbag: I don’t tend to write to the fictional world, I’m writing how I feel, and then the visual side will bring it together. On ‘dead end kids’, it was just a genuine frustration towards the way that the world works, and I wanted to express that through sounds and lyrics. Then it’s like, how can I bring the audio into this world and have the monsters playing in the band? Each song on the EP is dedicated to a monster, so Eugene owns ‘dead end kids’ because the emotions he portrays are frustration and anger.

Photography Felix Jackson

Through ratbag you’ve built this really strong, immersive visual world. Are you inspired by the visuals of any other artists?

ratbag: I think it’s probably more movies. I was always the kid who wanted to watch horror movies if I was at a sleepover. I’ve always been drawn to the more interactive side of media, which to me is horror because it physically makes you feel a sense of fear and you remember it afterwards. The other night, I thought there was like a spirit under my bed and I could really imagine what it looked like, and it was just from a horror movie I’d watched recently that was really well designed. It just like freaked me out to my core and I just think, although I don’t like being freaked out, I kind of do.

You’ve built your audience really organically, what has the response been to the songs so far?

ratbag: I’ve been thrilled, actually, by the response. People are really into the world, which is just so rewarding to watch. Although I made it purely for myself, being able to share it is just such an amazing thing. I think people are sort of catching on in the hope that one day, they might even do things like create their versions of the characters or just recreate parts of my world into their own. But seeing the response and people reacting to what I’ve done is just so cool, and they know the characters well already. Sometimes I do Instagram polls and I’ll ask a question to do with the four monsters and the responses are just so good and so funny. So I’m having a great time watching the world come to life and watching people react to it.

How far ahead have you planned for the universe of ratbag? Do you have a storyline planned out for the band?

ratbag: I won’t share it, but I have pretty much always had a plan. I’ve always been years ahead of what I’ve released and there’s just so much more to come. Sometimes it gets frustrating but I do want to release it slowly in little pieces. But it is awesome. Just seeing how interested people are already, I’m just like ‘You just wait’.

Courtesy of the artist

What was the most recent note on your Notes app?

ratbag: It’s some lyrics from a session I was in yesterday, and it’s called ‘Crocodile Tears’.

What was the last text you sent?

ratbag: The last text I sent was to my mom, and it says, ‘mom, the dog has fleas’. And she just liked the message. Nothing else.

What was the last meme you saved?

ratbag: I don’t know if this counts as a meme, I’m not a huge meme person. But I just like pictures that are kind of memes. So it’s just a monkey in a shower. He has spiky hair and he’s just me.

What’s your favourite corner shop snack?

ratbag: They’re called Spaceman sticks and they’re like a little packet of cigarettes made of condensed marshmallow or something. They’re just good and I like to pretend I’m smoking.

What would your ghost outfit be?

ratbag: My dressing gown and my dad’s fuzzy socks.

Do you have any recurring dreams?

ratbag: Yes, I do. I used to read these books when I was a kid, they were called I Spy books or something. The whole book would just be full of pages of a really detailed scene and you’d have to find these little things. In my dream, I wake up in that scene, and there’s just a singular treasure chest at the end of the room. I walk up to the treasure chest and I open it and every single time I open it this ginger fucked-up cat with a little jester hat just springs out at my face. And then I wake up every time.

What would your funeral song be?

ratbag: I am a strong believer in funerals being a happy event. So I would want my song to be ‘Why Do You Feel So Down’ by Declan McKenna.

What’s on your for you page right now?

ratbag: Helga. And if you don’t know Helga, I’m gonna leave it there and you can go and look at Helga.

You encounter a hostile alien race and sound is their only mechanism for communication – what song would you play to inspire them to spare you and the rest of the human race?

ratbag: ‘Space Song’ by Beach House. One, it’s a brilliant song and two, I would hope that it would make them miss being in space and then they will leave me alone.

ratbag has announced two headline shows in Australia this October. Head to worldofratbag.com for dates and tickets.