Art-pop duo Rubblebucket recently performed at 9:30 Club, and Steve Satzberg was there to photograph the show!
Said Steve, “Rubblebucket brought the show to the 9:30 Club Wednesday night. I did what I could, but you have to go see them to be part of the experience.”
The following article is adapted from a press release.
In 2024, Rubblebucket released Year of the Banana, the band’s seventh full-length album. The album’ lead single was perhaps the funkiest song they’ve ever made, “Rattlesnake.” The band loosely adapted a poem lead singer Kalmia Traver and wrote called “Time for the Rattlesnake” from her zine poetry book Year of The Banana, capturing it in a funky-disco-smash song form. It was an early highlight in their show at 9:30 Club on Feb. 5.
“A few years before I wrote the rattlesnake poem, my mom and I were on a 30-mile bike ride… Just off the path we spotted a massive rattlesnake lounging in the dappled forest sunlight. It was my first time ever seeing one and my instinct was to stop and get a good look. My mom’s instinct was to get the hell out of there, and we laughed later about this dynamic,” Traver said. “The beauty of it took my breath away. But I later ruminated about how even when I am faced with the most breathtaking of our planet’s offerings, it can still be very hard to be present, focused & relaxed because of the chronic anxiety from which I suffer.”
Though the tune opens with the neurotic “I don’t want to analyze you but…”, it unveils itself as one character pushing another to self-examine; for Rubblebucket, therapy takes the form of a dance party.
It’s the first Rubblebucket song with strings (laid down by their good friend Renata Zieguer) since their 2014 song “Carousel Ride.” The band went full disco-funk with “Rattlesnake”, producing a track that sounds like Bee Gees and Michael Jackson meets Stereolab.
Watch the official music video for “Rattlesnake” by Rubblebucket on YouTube:
One of the most compelling groups on the scene since the early 2010s, Rubblebucket’s seeds were sown when Kalmia Traver and Alex Toth, the group’s front persons, co-writers and co-producers, first began a friendship as jazz students at the University of Vermont. Soon after, they formed Rubblebucket, using the project to delve into pop, funk, dance, and psychedelia; performances have spanned Bonnaroo to Glastonbury to their self-curated Dream Picnic Festival, and they’ve collaborated with kindred genre-blenders including Arcade Fire and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears.
Hannah Mohan opened Rubblebucket at 9:30 Club! Scroll down for photos of her performance.
Here are some photos of Rubblebucket performing at 9:30 Club on Feb. 5, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Steve Satzberg.
And here are some photos of Hannah Mohan opening Rubblebucket at 9:30 Club on Feb. 5, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Steve Satzberg.
