‘Coulee City Rodeo Queen’: Scotland’s Olivia Rafferty puts the rock in pop-rock with new geological single

SINGLE REVIEW | OLIVIA RAFFERTY – COULEE CITY RODEO QUEEN by Martha Munro

It goes without saying that nerds are everywhere in the music industry. But a singer-songwriter who nerds out about music and geology at once? Meet Olivia Rafferty, the underground, soft pop-rock artist from Scotland, who is intent on making 2025 her year. Fans of Kathleen Edwards, Counting Crows, and obscure natural history – you’ll definitely want to put Olivia Rafferty on your playlist.

Her brand new pastoral track Coulee City Rodeo Queen is the first single and glimpse of Rafferty’s upcoming album Typical Forever, which is set to be released in March of this year. The singer-songwriter uses geological topics, such as volcanoes, fossils, and (as seen in this latest track) ice age floods, to express human emotions and experiences. With her evocative lyrics, stunning electric guitar pockets, and a country-road-drive feel, Rafferty has created a powerful, passion-packed single which, albeit with its flaws, has a refreshing, magical something that makes her stand out amid the sea of British pop-rock up-and-comers. Let’s face it: nothing says rock more than lyrics about actual rocks.

With the stimulus of the Missoula ice age floods of North West America, dating back about 15,000 years, Coulee City Rodeo Queen captures the image of someone braving their own metaphorical flood and realising that they can face much more than they originally thought. The artist compares this with the empowering feeling that taming a hoard of wild horses might bring, embracing the challenge and its beauty: “I’m not scared at all / The power’s beautiful.“

To open up the track, Rafferty uses her own echoey breaths paired with a singular, warped synth note, laying down a breezy foundation for the pastoral electric guitar line and steady drum beat to float across. Then, with subtle reverb, Rafferty’s vocals come in for the piano-dotted first verse, setting the scene of an oncoming flood.

The guitar line is brought higher and more prominently into the mix for an atmospheric pre-chorus before the sound reduces to just vocals and drum-tapping, exploring different dynamic qualities to heighten the anticipation of the chorus to come. However, it has to be said that the mixing in this short section does Rafferty no favours; her voice, while incredibly emotive and impressive, is placed far too high in the mix, which creates a jolty contrast to the first verse. But this fire is soon put out as the other elements, namely the beachy electric guitar, filter back in for a few guitar-spangled bars in and around the chorus’s hook: ‘I’m the Coulee City rodeo queen.’

As we move into the second verse, the mixing issue arises again, only this time the vocals are drowned out by the other musical lines rather than overtaking them. It’s a real shame to lose Rafferty’s smooth, stylish vocals under everything else. But there’s no denying that the ‘everything else’ in this section is stunning; cohesion at its finest, with gorgeous harmonies, high and low, balancing out the elements and smoothing out the bumps.

With this soundscape, Rafferty flows into the second chorus, packed to the brim with effortless harmonies, a heightened role for the piano, and variations in the electric guitar line before it truly gets its moment in a guitar solo; it’s technical, skillful and full of fun twists and turns, but not needlessly flashy, as instrumental sections like these can often be.

After a string-filled spotlight, Rafferty brings it right back down to just her and some acoustic guitar strums, which build in frequency and are soon joined by a classic pop-rock drumstick-tap pattern to rebuild anticipation. With each of the other elements we’ve heard filtering back in one by one, the build-up of both sound and confidence is epitomised in a climactic, downright euphoric final chorus, featuring impressive high note changes in Rafferty’s strong lower register.

By ending the song in a cyclical fashion, repeating the first line “The sun comes up over a holocene,” the singer-songwriter reinforces her creative prowess, approaching the same, daunting situation with new, courageous eyes as the true Coulee City Rodeo Queen.

So, despite some slightly uneven aspects, this new track is a pretty unforgettable one; Rafferty has used an abstract historical event to connect us more with our current mindsets and challenges to face. After listening to this song, you’ll most certainly want to hear more geological gems from Olivia Rafferty.