Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
2023 was a huge year for Chicago’s Ratboys, marked by the release of The Window, an album that seemed to be on everyone’s lips and lists. It captured the band’s ability for fuzzy rock and long jams, but maintained the tenderness in Julia Steiner’s vocals. The songwriting is like a sun shower, beautiful and surprising, carried by a lighthearted yet earnest conviction. The single “The Window” can still make me teary if I hear it on the right day, and that record seemed to propel their career in a big way. Now they’re back with their debut release for New West Records, Singin’ to an Empty Chair.
Make no mistake, this is Ratboys at their most honest, inspired, and flat-out their best. The songs invite you into vast worlds yet small moments, and begin with a question of “what’s it gonna take to open up this time?” Singin’ to an Empty Chair is full of pointed questions, specific moments, and mined memories put back together after cracking them open to trace out how two people could end up where they are now—separated, apart, distant. Two complete strangers.
The record is inspired by the empty chair technique (also referred to as chairwork), a therapy exercise that aims to have difficult or impossible conversations with someone vacant. It’s self-explanatory, where someone carries on a conversation with someone else who is not actually in the room (the empty chair) to resolve past traumas. We’ve seen this in art before—think movie monologues, plays, or poetry, where a poem is directed at a “you” who may or may not actually be there at all. However, it’s rare to see therapy like this get discussed in music, and that’s what makes the record so strong. The whole album is the act of chairwork itself, with each song filling in an estranged loved one about what’s been happening in life without them around as a witness. We don’t know if they ever heard the message, but at least the signal was sent out, and that’s what builds the tension throughout Singin’ to an Empty Chair.
One of Ratboys many appeals hides behind the oversized sweatshirt of being Midwest-nice, but their songwriting stings when it needs to. The music is post-country/guitar-driven rock with contagious songwriting. It covers restless want, old aches, and a sense of something that’s not quite closure, but that feeling when you’re a step closer to feeling stitched up again. It’s a wound that’s reluctant to close, but the scars eventually tell a story. This record highlights the honest arc of affirming to oneself that they are doing the work that needs to be done. It’s not an easy, clean solve, but rather the realization that living with anger, grief, and joy is what healing is all about.
“Know You Then” digs up old trauma that seems to seep into a relationship, despite one side not being present for it. “No, it’s not my fault ‘cause I didn’t know you then.” A simple confirmation, but one that packs a punch. I don’t want to speak (entirely) too soon, but “Anywhere” might be my song of the summer. The punky riff gives this album a lift that meanders away from the country-twang that encapsulates the songs, with “Oh, I know it’s bad / but, I can’t help my panic attack” setting this one off to the races.
The most vivid of the songs, to me, is “Just Want You to Know the Truth.” It unveils a picture of a day before things changed, of daydreaming about what an unrenovated house could become, lasagna in the oven on Christmas Eve, all before skeletons were unburied and a phone number was blocked, because it’s easier to ignore something than to tell the truth of not doing so great. This song is where the album gets its name from, and is the most heartfelt and devastating, wrapping up with riffs that feel almost angry or betrayed. It’s the song that sprawls into a jam off this record, eventually simmering out with “Well, I’m not ready, but I hope I will be soon / I just want you to know the truth.” “Burn it Down” floats into a similar fuzzy jam with still-biting lines like “take your kindling rage and throw it on the flame” before wrapping up the record with a moment of respite in “At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood.”
The final song off Singin’ to an Empty Chair picks up in a more uplifting melody and celebrates every moment: rain, shine, joy, pain, beauty. It’s about coming back to reality after spinning out, which is okay—life can be long and fruitful when you find peace in the easy and not-so-easy times. So let this album encourage you to sing to an empty chair and find some sort of peace, too. Maybe it’s a handwritten letter, sealed and addressed, but burned in a massive bonfire with friends by your side. Maybe it’s a name written in sand, and you walk away as the wind erases it. It’s never too late to have a conversation with the air around you and see what it might inspire.
Photo by Miles Kalchik
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Ryleigh Wann //@wannderfullll
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