“I’m singin’ to an empty chair,” Julia Steiner sings on “Just Want You to Know the Truth,” the eight-and-a-half-minute centerpiece of her band Ratboys’ latest album, aptly titled “Singin’ to an Empty Chair.”
It references a common therapy method in which a patient communicates with an open seat, and it serves as a sort of thesis statement for the project, whose songs touch on the difficulties of communication, and the often futile attempts to traverse the emotional and spatial distances that separate us. (“What’s it gonna take to open up?” she asks in the opening track.) “Singin’ to an Empty Chair” was also one of the last lyrics Steiner wrote.
“That was the final piece of the puzzle within the whole record and the context of all the songs,” she says on a Zoom call with guitarist Dave Sagan and drummer Marcus Nuccio, each of them resting in their respective homes in Chicagoland between gigs in Milwaukee and St. Louis. “It provided a helpful framework to view all these songs as essentially an offering into the void. An update across this distance and absence.”
Unlike most songs by the alt-country four-piece, “Just Want You to Know the Truth” was fully demoed before Steiner put pen to paper. “That’s honestly uncomfortable territory for me,” she says. “I’m usually working in exactly the opposite process — 99% of the time, I have lyrics before I even bring an idea to the guys.”
The song plays out like a scrapbook of Steiner’s memories as she yearns for a simpler time with a loved one since estranged. “I had so much to say,” she says, chuckling, unknowingly echoing the chorus of the song: “There’s a lot that I would like to say to you / I just want you to know the truth.”
Of all the songs on “Singin’ to an Empty Chair,” this was the one that troubled Steiner the most. “It’s not in a rush to make itself known, and it’s so plain spoken,” she says. “I was nervous about that song, not knowing if people would appreciate it or care about it. And people have spoken to me about how much of a highlight that is. It’s a massive relief.”
The song retroactively reframed the entire album and helped Steiner “understand myself in a new way.” She likens it to Ratboys’ last album, “The Window,” whose title arose from a subconscious pattern in Steiner’s lyrics. “Without realizing, I kept writing about windows across all these different songs,” she recalls. “Marcus was like, ‘You’re talking about windows on six of these songs.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, fuck, you’re right. I didn’t even notice!’
Steiner continues, “When I’m writing lyrics, I try to be as unconscious — not unconscious. I’m awake! But I try to not let my self-consciousness get in the way. The ultimate goal is to be completely outside of your head and just allow lyrics to emerge.”
When it was time to craft the follow-up to “The Window,” Ratboys (that’s Steiner, Sagan, Nuccio and bassist Sean Neumann) escaped to a cabin in Wisconsin with the goal of making an album that resembled a “quilt.” Unlike the last album, they wanted to record in three distinct studio environments — the other two in Chicago and Evanston, Ill. “Let’s just capture a bunch of different sounds and different takes in these different spaces and rooms,” Nuccio says, “with the knowledge that we’re going to sew it all together later.”
“The Window” producer and Death Cab for Cutie alum Chris Walla helped the band shape the songs across the different spaces, stitching together different “scenes” to create a patchworked album. “He called it our country mouse to city rat approach,” Steiner says. “I’m so grateful that he saw both of those rodent identities within us, because we felt very seen.”
Walla also encouraged the band to record the tracks live, standing in a circle, and “stretch the songs as far as we could,” she adds. (Ratboys have become known for their vast sonic landscapes, best exemplified in the nearly nine-minute 2023 fan favorite “Black Earth, WI.”) How do they know when a song is going to near a double-digit runtime?
“It’s super intuitive,” Steiner says. “It’s just part of the four of us, and that mystifying chemistry that happens when humans come together and collaborate on art.”
When it came time to shoot the cover art, the band went to a friend’s farm in downstate Illinois. Nuccio took a roll of film into a meadow and placed two thrift store chairs across from each other. Then, he snapped the photo from within the shadows. “It’s almost voyeuristic,” he says.
Sagan views it slightly differently. “The chairs are like coming across a picnic table in a park, where you just have to sit down for a second and relax,” he says. “And I think that’s what the best music does. It invites you in.”
Leave a Reply