When the music industry (and the rest of the world) shut down in March 2020, Rainbow Girls continued to plow forward virtually — performing weekly via Facebook Live, sharing videos of cover songs on YouTube, and compiling some of these performances for a Bandcamp exclusive “virtual live album” album called While We Wait. For 16 months they found new ways to connect with their devoted online followers, and as their fanbase continued to grow, decided they couldn’t wait any longer to give their listeners a new set of original music: “We wanted to give back to the people who showed up to support us when we weren’t able to play in-person shows. We recorded these songs in our home studio, set a dumpster on fire, and hatched a plan to leak this little record to the public one song at a time, by way of our Monday night Facebook Live video series.”
“Doesn’t Make Any Sense” (below) is the second single from Rainbow Girls’ forthcoming album, Rolling Dumpster Fire, but in contrast to the album title, the track is delicate, tender, and intimate. A finely tuned three-part harmony blends over a perfectly minimalist fingerstyle guitar, eventually joined by an encapsulating Hammond organ that unfolds more like a perfectly crafted campfire. A step back from the animated and lively spiritedness that Rainbow Girls have become known for, “Doesn’t Make Any Sense” rekindles the intimate folk of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
Of “Doesn’t Make Any Sense,” Erin Chapin (one-third of the trio) offers, “This is probably the most intimate song on this record. The storyline moves through the events of a single weekend with two lovers finally coming together, just to be pulled apart by some unknown and unnamed force. Though written through the lens of a personal, very literal experience with romantic love, the overarching theme of ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’ is something everyone seems to be experiencing right now: the pandemic; climate change; homelessness; the refusal to treat all types of people with dignity, respect, and equality. Nothing makes any sense. How can salvation be so obvious, yet so intangible?”
