Ratboys on Crafting Their Most Personal Album Yet and Embracing Their ‘Rodent Identities’ in the Studio

On the sprawling eight-and-a-half-minute track "Just Want You to Know the Truth," Ratboys frontwoman Julia Steiner delivers a poignant line that became the title of the band's latest album: "I’m singin’ to an empty chair." This phrase references a common therapeutic technique where one addresses an vacant seat, a metaphor that perfectly encapsulates the record's core themes. The songs collectively explore the challenges of communication and the emotional chasms that often exist between people, a sentiment echoed in the opening track's plea, "What’s it gonna take to open up?" For Steiner, this lyric was the final piece of the puzzle, providing a framework to view the entire album as "an offering into the void—an update across distance and absence."

The creation of this centerpiece song marked a departure from Ratboys' typical process. Unlike 99% of their material, where Steiner arrives with complete lyrics, "Just Want You to Know the Truth" was fully demoed instrumentally first. "That’s honestly uncomfortable territory for me," Steiner admits. The resulting track unfolds like a scrapbook of memories, yearning for a simpler time with a now-estranged loved one. Its plain-spoken, unhurried nature initially made Steiner nervous, but fan reception has been a relief, with many citing it as a highlight. She notes that the song retroactively reframed the entire album, helping her understand herself in a new way, much like how the title of their previous album, *The Window*, emerged from a subconscious pattern in her lyrics that she hadn't initially noticed.

To craft the follow-up to 2023's *The Window*, the Chicago-based four-piece—Steiner, guitarist Dave Sagan, drummer Marcus Nuccio, and bassist Sean Neumann—adopted a deliberately patchwork approach. They began by escaping to a Wisconsin cabin with the goal of creating a sonic "quilt," later recording in two additional studios in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois. As Nuccio explains, the plan was to "capture a bunch of different sounds... with the knowledge that we’re going to sew it all together later." Guiding this process was producer Chris Walla, a former member of the influential indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, known for his meticulous studio work. Walla encouraged the band to record live while standing in a circle and to "stretch the songs as far as we could," a practice that has led to their signature expansive sound, exemplified by fan favorites like the nearly nine-minute "Black Earth, WI."

The band's intuitive chemistry is key to knowing when a song merits such an extended runtime. "It’s super intuitive," Steiner says, describing it as part of the "mystifying chemistry that happens when humans come together and collaborate on art." This collaborative spirit extended to the album's visual identity. For the cover art, Nuccio took a film camera to a friend's farm in downstate Illinois, placing two thrift-store chairs in a meadow and photographing them from the shadows. "It’s almost voyeuristic," he observes. Sagan offers a warmer interpretation, suggesting the scene invites the listener in, much like the best music does: "The chairs are like coming across a picnic table in a park, where you just have to sit down for a second and relax." This duality—observation versus invitation—mirrors the album's own exploration of distance and connection.