Weird Music Wednesday: “TELL ME NOW!” by Bessie and the Rainbowkids

Apr 22, 2026

With the release of COLORZ, Bessie and the Rainbowkids (Led by jazzer Russell Hall) have finally stopped flirting with chaos and decided to move in with it. For a band that started as a relatively polite soul-jazz-fusion outfit, this record marks a definitive pivot into a world of hyper-saturated textures and unpredictable song structures akin to a full-scale synth and guitar pedal laboratory explosion. It’s the sound of a group that has grown tired of being charming and is now much more interested in being overwhelming.

COLORZ is not an easy listen, nor is it trying to be. It is a loud, messy, and occasionally exhausting statement of intent. By leaning into their most eccentric impulses, Bessie and the Rainbowkids have moved past the “promising” stage of their career and into something far more volatile and interesting. It’s an album that proves the best way to see the full spectrum is to stop worrying about staying inside the lines.

This album jumps all over the place stylistically… I mean, is tri-polar a thing? This constant shifting is what makes the album’s evolution so distinct from their earlier work. In the past, a Bessie and the Rainbowkids record had a “vibe.” Now, each song has its own climate, its own gravity, and its own set of rules. They’ve moved away from the idea of a “band sound” and toward the idea of a “band playground,” where no two pieces of equipment are used the same way twice. It is an exhausting, brilliant, (and to the casual listener) irritating display of versatility.

While most of the album dances on the edge of reason, “TELL ME NOW!” is where the genius of the method is exposed. There are “weirder” songs on the record (“The Shadow Of Your Love” comes to mind), but none as weirdly listenable as this one. It opens with a distorted bass/tuba loop, transitions eventually into a frantic drum-and-bass workout, and features a bridge that consists almost entirely of Bessie whispering what sounds like a grocery list over a recording of a jazz combo warming up for a duet with a dial-up modem. Despite the sonic clutter (or maybe because of it), this track demands you change your emotional state every thirty seconds. It feels like a deliberate challenge to the listener’s patience, yet it remains strangely addictive right up until the song literally runs out of gas.