Hanging over Sophie Brown’s bed, between a plethora of old magazine cuttings plastered to the walls, is a taxidermied tarantula encased in glass. “The back of the frame has kind of started to peel off, and I’m lowkey so scared it’s gonna fall on me in my sleep,” she laughs, glancing up at the furry legs protruding ominously above her.
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To those acquainted with the creepy universe Brown has forged around her music as Ratbag, the fact she sleeps with a phobia-inducing predator mere centimetres from her head will be no surprise. In her creative realm, horror reigns – the ghastliness of the real world encapsulated in and eclipsed by the fantastical creatures that accompany her brand of spooky yet endlessly vibrant alternative pop.
Ratbag on The Cover of NME. Credit: Jared Tinetti for NME
Brown’s distinctive domain began as scribblings in her homework margins when she was 17. Before long, she began taking the creatures in her imagination and merging them with music. The now-22-year-old has not-so-slowly amassed a fanbase keen to take up residence in the Ratbag world. Since she first began posting snippets of music and animation on TikTok four years ago, a dedicated community has formed around her music, and though they’re connected through the digital space, it’s a hands-on fandom defined by crafting, jewellery, drawings, clothing and figurines inspired by the characters Brown used to absentmindedly dream up before bed.
“The last show I had, someone made an entire toy from something that I had drawn and put on a shirt, this little devil guy,” she tells NME from her bedroom in Auckland, New Zealand, hints of both pride and disbelief in her voice. “I never even imagined it being anything more than a drawing, and then this person made it out of fabric, stuffed it and used it as a keychain. That’s so cool, and I never would have even thought of that.”
Credit: Jared Tinetti for NME
Though the Ratbag universe is a product of her own brain, Brown is far from protective – in fact, she’s opening the doors for anyone with the tools to expand it. “It is like my baby,” she smiles, “but I think there’s so much room for inviting people into it. My dream is to collect as many creative people as possible and bring them all into this one bubble and see what we can do together.”
Welcoming others into her realm, in Brown’s eyes, provides endless possibilities for growth as other artists and fans interpret her ideas in ways beyond her own imagination. “I have this vision of my world existing in every single medium,” she explains. Already, it’s meant an evolution to her visuals, morphing from her fictional animal band who represent different slices of her personality to ‘real world’ characters brought to life through prosthetics. Press play on the music videos for ‘Look What You’re Doing To Me’ and ‘Juliet & Juliet’ and you’ll be greeted by evidence of the latter in the form of a “vampire lady” love interest.
“I have this vision of my world existing in every single medium”
This wealth of creepy influences extends beyond her visuals and is also interwoven into the collection of haunting sounds hidden in the background of her music. Dissonance and layering forge a disorienting atmosphere with subtle, haunting moments; screeches are almost drowned out by snare hits and squealing strings in homage to horror movie soundtracks. These sounds are meticulously placed to conjure a wider, ominous feeling. “It’s the stuff that non-musicians would never actually be able to pick out, but they can feel,” she explains.
Brown had already deployed this approach on her 2023 debut EP ‘Why Aren’t You Laughing?’, which was steeped in an eclectic range of influences, from grunge to indie-rock and shoegaze. The EP lamented the reality of youth in the modern age, capturing the everyday struggles of mental health and growing up on a “dead-end street” while exploring big-picture topics like living under the control of powerful men and first fleeting encounters with love.
Credit: Jared Tinetti for NME
On its follow-up, set for release later this year, horror is present in a less obvious but still slightly unsettling way. Brown has been taking notes from Charli XCX’s cultural phenomenon ‘Brat’. As the Kiwi artist points out, beneath the wave of lurid green memes and iconic fashion moments is a record steeped in vulnerability, laying bare the insecurity and discomfort that comes with existing as a woman in the music industry.
“There’s no point faffing around and sugar-coating shit because, at the end of the day, you should be saying how you feel,” she explains. “‘Brat’ was just so real, and I fuck with real stuff. I don’t want to tiptoe around anything in my life. I want to say the things that most people are afraid even to think or feel guilty for thinking.”
Her hopes to emulate the ‘Brat’ ethos are evident on her new EP, where she grapples with “the grosser sides of becoming an adult” over some of her most euphoria-inducing soundscapes to date. Appropriately, then, she tackles one of the truest horrors of our age: the tumultuous, tummy-turning sickness of a situationship. ‘Look What You’re Doing To Me’, a soft, acoustic guitar-led, unrequited love song infused with scratchy, horror-inspired strings and trip-hop beats, soundtracks the feeling of a trapdoor unexpectedly opening beneath your feet when you’re in love and surrendering all control to another unpredictable and imperfect human. It’s an achingly familiar sensation that, though painful, is injected with a dose of sweetness. “I don’t bite my nails when you’re around/It’s something that I have just noticed now,” she sings softly. Another song, the exhilarating, David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’-esque, partner-in-crime anthem ‘Juliet & Juliet’, outlines the unparalleled joy of things finally falling into place.
Credit: Jared Tinetti for NME
But mostly, the EP chronicles the love and horror inherent in womanhood. “I’m finding that being a woman is beautiful and sexy, and also very terrifying,” Brown explains. That beauty, she says, has been uncovered while exploring her queer identity. “A few years ago, I finally told myself that I was, in fact, very gay. And since then, I feel that being a woman has only…” She takes a moment to find the word, tapping a finger adorned with chipped nail polish against her lip before settling on: “Bloomed. It’s suddenly gotten better.”
Yet all the beauty can’t erase the more disturbing aspects of womanhood, which she bluntly outlines: “The way that men view you, the way that men want you to be.” It’s a sentiment that rings true today amid a landscape where, across the world, men’s rights influencers are gaining traction, misogynists take positions of power, reproductive rights are threatened, and trans women increasingly face scrutiny for simply existing.
“Being a woman is beautiful and sexy, and also very terrifying”
She exorcises some of that rage on the funky, jazz-flecked ‘King Of Kingston’, a track she describes as “a critique of male entitlement” that came from visualising men in power as “big babies wearing nappies and little ties”. Closing the EP, its brighter, more soulful elements are underpinned by her disenfranchised drawl, pondering: “Is this the world to come?”. “I wanted to write about the disgust that I feel when I remember that these are the men that are making the decisions in the world,” she says.
“It’s a weird thing living in New Zealand because we’re always about 10 steps behind America, and we can see how it’s panning out over there,” Brown says. “Recently, it’s become apparent that we’re also, unfortunately, falling into the same things as America, and it’s really scary to see because I always thought I was quite safe here, seeing as we just had a female Prime Minister.
“When you’re little, you just think things are only going to get better. I thought that was how life works. Now, seeing so many things going backwards, it’s really distressing and disorienting.”
In these unprecedented times, Brown deems meticulously carving out an immersive live show more important than ever. To translate her fictional world to the stage, she spent a week making costumes to bring her characters to life, sewing scraps of denim together to create masks that frighten even her.
“Even though I’m the one making them, I still feel like they’re real,” she grins. “I’ll glance over, and I’ll be like, ‘Holy shit. That’s actually scary.’ It feels like they created themselves because when I’m making [the costumes], it’s very intuitive. I don’t really have a plan. I’m just piecing together these fabrics, and it does actually feel like there is a soul in them.”
This soul is not something she takes lightly, knowing that for her community, Ratbag is a place of refuge in an increasingly confusing political landscape. “I really hope that they feel like my world is just a little bit of an escape for a moment. It’s quite an important thing for me,” Brown explains. “This current world sucks, and it’s just really nice to be able to step into something else for a bit.”
Ratbag’s ‘Juliet & Juliet’ is out now via Mischief Records/Universal Music New Zealand. A new EP will follow later this year.
Listen to Ratbag’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Laura Molloy
Photos: Jared Tinetti
Styling: Ana van Schie de Pont
Label: Mischief Records/Universal Music New Zealand
