CRJ-900 Captain reported a R Transfer Shut Off Valve Caution Message illuminated on climb. The Flight Crew noticed an increase in center tank fuel quantity and heard a load bang. The flight Crew elected to request priority handling and perform an air turn back and precautionary landing at departure airport.

Narrative

After rotation out of ZZZ we received an R XFER SOV Caution Message. The QRH had us monitoring the fuel quantity in the center tank. In the climb we saw the center tank indicating an increasing amount of fuel that we attributed to the nose high attitude. During the climb as we entered a thin cloud layer we heard a loud clang sound from outside the aircraft that caused the First Officer (FO) and I to make eye contact to acknowledge that we'd both heard such a noticeable noise. Once we leveled off the center tank fuel dropped to zero which we expected. However we saw our total fuel start to decrease rapidly. The combination of a previous issue with our fuel system; an unknown alarming external sound; and the rapid decrease in fuel we requested priority handling and diverted back to ZZZ1. We landed without incident and coordinated with maintenance. They informed us the loud noise we heard was supposedly the external air door not being secured. The FO and I had believed the noise came from the forward captain's side but there were no other external abnormalities. The issue with the fuel system ended up being with the gauges themselves presenting us with erratic information.A combination of initial fuel system complications; abnormal external sounds during climb; and rapid decrease of fuel.