REVIEW: Rainbow Kitten Surprise Bring a Magical Performance to Schenectady
03/08 @ Proctor’s Theatre
“With [ElA MelO’s] stunning presence and dynamic vocals — emotive, raw, and tonally flawless — we were hanging on her every word and every move all night.”
Rainbow Kitten Surprise is a band that can not only save your life when you’re hanging by a thread, but also provide the soundtrack to your dance parties during the best of times. This band reaches me when nothing else can, and it is the music I lean on when I need music most.
On the evening of March 8, I attended my first RKS show when they graced our 518 scene with a tour stop at Proctor’s Theatre. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to — ever. The band is currently on tour in support of their September 2025 album release, bones, a flawless “straight into the canon” kind of record that became a favorite after my first listen. RKS wrote and recorded bones with the goal of encapsulating their live energy — they succeeded. bones has the catharsis, the realness, the hooks, and an undercurrent of hope that leaves listeners feeling like somehow, everything is going to be alright. Rainbow Kitten Surprise is not a band that collects casual fans; they have a loyal ride or die community. Their shows are a place of queer joy and belonging — a place where you can come as you are or come as you want to be. Simply put, they’re magical.
Leading up to the show, I felt a giddiness that I haven’t experienced since I was a teenager. Back then, every show felt monumental. Sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s station wagon on the way to Saratoga Winners (as one did in 2002), I always had electric butterflies in my gut. Driving myself into Schenectady past the GE sign, I felt it — the same electricity and the same butterflies. Meeting up with friends at Herbie’s before the show, I was too excited to eat. I couldn’t sit still. I hovered over the table like a weirdo, jittery, thinking about how I was going to react to the sight of RKS — especially frontwoman Ela Melo — taking the stage. Tears? Feral scream? All of the above? When the moment came, I simply felt like I was floating. I may have actually levitated — cannot confirm or deny.
Opening with “Hell Nah,” track two off bones, the band took the stage through a red glow of smoke and well-chosen lighting, inviting us to settle into something a bit more ethereal. Ela Melo, magnetic as ever, was instantly enthralling as she arrived at center stage with ease and self-assurance. She moves like gravity is optional. With her stunning presence and dynamic vocals — emotive, raw, and tonally flawless — we were hanging on her every word and every move all night.
Melo’s bandmates orbit her with a tightness that is only possible when all members adore each other and the music they are playing. Their vocal harmonies are as immaculate live as they are in recordings. The drums and bass are driving and groovy. There are moments of charming choreography. Melo and bassist, Maddie Bouton, skip toward each other and dance back to back. Rhythm guitarist/backup vocalist Buzzy Keller takes Melo’s hand and leads her across the drum platform, invoking the iconic gazebo scene from The Sound of Music. Then, there are the more casual moments when you feel like you’re watching a group of friends jamming in their living room. They clearly feel at home with each other and at home on stage; as their audience, they make us feel at home too.
The setlist was well-crafted and generous, representing bones with “Hell Nah,” “Dang,” “Friendly Fire,” “Tropics” (more on that later), and a solo performance of “Texas Hold ‘Em” from Melo on acoustic guitar, delivered with a sweet sincerity that had us passing the tissues.
RKS covered all eras of their catalog, featuring beloved favorites like “Hide,” “Our Song,” “Goodnight Chicago,” “Cocaine Jesus,” “Painkillers,” and deeper cuts like “Holy War” and “Wasted.” They even casually treated us to a brand new, unreleased banger, possibly called “Sixteen.”
In the acoustic interlude, after Melo broke our hearts with “Texas Hold ‘Em,” three members of RKS returned to the stage and joined her around a cardioid microphone to perform “Hey Pretty Momma” and “First Class.” Melo described this arrangement as “old school” and referenced the band’s roots, saying, “I’m from Boone, North Carolina” and asking, “Are there mountains around here?” The audience answered, tripping over each other to yell out “Adirondacks,” “Catskills,” and “Berkshires.” Melo replied, “I knew it — I can tell you’re my people.” (I think that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.) With that, the RKS quartet performed “First Class” in four-part harmony as the crowd joined in for the 2500-person singalong we didn’t know we needed.
Throughout the night, there was a collective and palpable effort from the audience to tell the band how much they mean to us. In sharing what she has called “the heavy and the happy” of her own life, Melo has crafted songs that can heal. How do you say thank you for something so meaningful in a crowd of 2500 people?
In the occasional space between the applause and the next song, shouts of, “We love you!” echoed from various corners of the venue (including mine). I think we said it best, though, between the set closer, “Wasted,” and the encore. The lights went down. Rainbow Kitten Surprise left the stage. Our applause never faded. It started loud, and it stayed loud — so loud. We weren’t being polite, and we weren’t just going through the motions of an encore ritual. We meant it. We just had so much to tell them: “Thank you. We love you.”
RKS returned with “Tropics,” the anthemic, cathartic closing track on bones. Before bones arrived, “Tropics” was a cult favorite that fans begged the band to record and release. They listened, gifting us both the perfect album closer and the perfect encore. Ela advised, “I’m going to cue you on this one… it won’t be subtle. You’ll hear ‘let’s fucking go,’ and if you are able to jump, you’ll jump. I’ll be watching.” We tested the structural integrity of our 99-year-old theater as Ela sang, “Roller coaster, darling / Can you see the starlight?”
Rainbow Kitten Surprise left us with “It’s Called: Freefall” — their most streamed, most charted, and statistically most popular song. Melo sings, “You could let it all go / It’s called freefall / Cause ain’t shit free but falling out, and that shit’s easy; let me show you how” before falling backwards onto the hard stage. It is the ultimate trust fall. Melo isn’t falling against a bandmate or into the crowd. She is freefalling to the ground, and it’s up to her to catch herself.
(Metaphor incoming.) In a video that RKS posted on their TikTok page in 2023, Ela Melo describes how she wrote “It’s Called: Freefall” on a $50 organ she bought at a thrift store. Upon bringing it home, she turned it on to find that it only had two working keys: D and G. For Melo, that was enough. Holding one note down, she let her stream-of-consciousness lyrics flow and wrote her band’s biggest song.
“It’s Called: Freefall” is a song about letting go. The meaning of “letting go” is open to interpretation. I think it’s about trusting yourself. It’s about trusting that if you end up with a broken organ, as long as you have that one working note, you can make something spectacular happen. It’s about trusting that you have your own back and can catch yourself when you fall.
Rainbow Kitten Surprise has been partnering with Plus1 on their tours since 2019, donating a dollar from every ticket sold to high impact organizations supporting LGBTQIA+ needs, food security, flood relief in North Carolina where most of the band grew up, and other priority causes. They’re too humble to mention that, so I will.