ratbag

If you’re a troublemaker and you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you may have been called a “ratbag”. Aucklander Sophie Brown, who now releases music as ‘Ratbag’, certainly had no shortage of the endearing insult. “In New Zealand, it’s a mischievous kid who doesn’t follow the rules, who doesn’t behave,” she explains. “I used to draw on walls, I was that kid unfortunately. I know how to get on people’s nerves.”

Brown has graduated from drawing on walls to drawing on paper, where she’s spent the last two years creating a multimedia fictional band that’s like Gorillaz-meets-Neil Gaiman. There’s Deemo, the towering, lanky red devil who sports a bucket hat, Fritz, a puke-green crocodile-clown hybrid, Slug, who wears a bird mask with a spiky mohawk, and Eugene, a portly beast with a purple octopus for a head. As Ratbag, Brown acts as the frontwoman, singing songs about her everyday life and feelings with the help (and occasional hindrance) of her band.