Singin’ to an Empty Chair

Probably my favorite album of the year so far! They’re from Chicago so I had to give them a listen but I realized that I had actually heard them open for Guster 4 years ago! They sound somewhere in between Waxahatchee and Rilo Kiley, country but not country. I instantly sent this album to my dad without even finishing the album because I had to spread the word of this miraculous album!

Julia Steiner walks straight up to the problem on Open Up: "What's it gonna take to open up?" Conversational but not casual, the hard version of honesty where you don't get to control the reaction. Ratboys keep their sunshower brightness but stop using it as camouflage. Then they get weird, and it feels central rather than a side quest, Light Night Mountains All That full of images that refuse linear narrative while Dave Sagan's guitar acts like a nervous system. The centrepiece Just Want You to Know the Truth sprawls past eight minutes because the subject demands it, and its most devastating moment is its least theatrical. The chair stays empty. The songs keep talking anyway.