Merry Christmas, to one, to all and all that malarky!

I’m sat here typing while there is some standard tripe on the telly box, the christmas dinner slowly settling and the ale now flowing smoothly. But in the true spirit of Christmas we’ve got some things to give back….

Firstly – Yesterday, we’ve put up a nice little acoustic Christmas song for you, we put it up for download for free and now we’ve got something else pretty special for you.

We’ve got a nice little version of our previously never recorded track (apart from this little backstage video), “Blood Runs Thin”. It’s only available on 20 CDs though, in other words, like parsnips on your christmas dinner; it’s very limited!

It gets better though, we’ve bought some recycled card so we look cool and Samuel is a tad creative when he can be bothered so he will design and myself and Ben will struggle over the next couple of days with a bit of cutting a sticking (we’re not so creative). But I promise they will look great, lovely, splendid, unique and of course they’re handmade.

Even better, they’re only £2, and all the money made from the sale of this limited run of lovely discs will be donated to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, a well worthy cause I’m sure everyone will agree, and therefore you can as little as £2 pounds, or if you’re still in the giving spirit, then you can pay as much as you want/can afford. I beg you though, to dig deep, we’ve gone to the extra effort this Christmas and really want to be able to make a worthwhile donation to a cause close to our hearts.

Here’s the link to purchase one – http://theratells.bandcamp.com 

To encourage the maximum amount to be donate we have decided we will arrange a VERY VERY VERY special gig for the 10 people who pay the most (+ a friend each) to come and watch us play a full band gig and have a drink in a room that seems, relatively, like a cupboard compared to most venues we play.

So yes, get spending and we’ll get sending. We will arrange a date for the gig that suits everyone once we’ve sold enough CDs.

Now, time to get back to drinking and eating and eating and drinking!

Merry Christmas / frohe Weihnachten / feliz Navidad!

Danny x

We’ve been pretty busy lately opening our advent calendars and [insert other favourite festive activity here] so we thought we’d update you on what we’ve been up to…

The Ratells @ The Library Theatre (Photo by Richard Donson)

Firstly we’d like to say a massive thank you to all of you who came to see us at the Library Theatre last Friday, we really appreciate it and we went to bed that night with a huge smile on our face. It was a lovely venue and you were a lovely audience. If you’ve got any pictures/videos, please send them to press@theratells.com so we can put them up on here.

Last Friday was the launch of P H O B I A  // T A K E  A I M, our latest single, which is now available in the shop and also on iTunes & Spotify, do us a massive favour and go get it, we really do rely on every single sale to keep going and making music.

But fear not, we’re not done for this year just yet. We have 2 more lovely winter warming shows at our favourite Sheffield watering holes:

Friday 16th December – Frog & Parrot
Monday 19th December – SOYO LIVE w/ Alvarez Kings

Doors at 8pm and both dates are free entry so we’ll see you down the front!

If you didn’t make it down last Friday you will have missed out on our new merchandise. Thankfully, we are a bunch of geeks (apart from Rory who’s a nomad) and have revamped our website and managed to set up a fandabidosy shop where you can buy stuff. Oh, the merchandise will also be available at these gigs if you’d prefer to purchase in person.

Finally, we’ve got a few festive ideas to keep you entertained as we know you’re all probably sick of the John Lewis/Coca Cola christmas adverts by now so keep your mince pies peeled.

B xx

…all ready in time for tomorrow and available for your purchase….we’re also live on BBC Radio Sheffield now – click here to listen

Welcome friends and a happy new year!

At long last we’ve sorted our website to some sort of decent standard. Everything is in good working order, although we need to finish off adding more goodies but all in good time.

As you probably will of realised if you’re reading this, we’ve launched the website with our special Chrismas bundle available on our home page here. Basically 4 CDs and a T-Shirt for only £3 measly pounds. Go buy it, we’ve got a few left but will take the page down soon once everything is together.

Anyway, the year is almost out and we’ve had a cracker, we’ve enjoyed our biggest gigs to date, a new headquarters and brilliant reactions to our new tunes. Around a month ago we were in the studio and recorded 3 of these aforementioned songs to be released this year sometime, but the acoustic versions of these tracks are now available to download from our bandcamp.

Anyway, it’s January and we’ve only got one gig this month but it’s a cracker. I’m sure we don’t need to explain how great a Monday night at SOYO is, but this is the sheffield scenester awards. We’re playing with three good friends of ours, DT from The Cartells, Risky Heroes and the blistering Elephant Keys. It’s free entry and cheap drinks, so don’t miss out.