Ratboys have announced a new album titled Singin’ to an Empty Chair. The follow-up to 2023’s The Window lands on February 6 via New West Records. It includes the previously released single ‘Light Night Mountains All That’, one of the best songs of September, as well as a nervy, infectious new track called ‘Anywhere’. Check out its Bobby Butterscotch-directed video below.
Ratboys vocalist/guitarist Julia Steiner wrote most of the songs on the new album after attending therapy for the first time, which opened up a dialogue with a loved one from whom she’s estranged. The band recorded it with co-producer Chris Walla at various studios, including Electrical Audio in Chicago and Rosebud Studio in Evanston, Illinois.
“We recorded the songs in all these different places, so we approached it in a way where different songs had different scenes,” Steiner explained. “Certain parts of songs were recorded in different spaces, and we switch back and forth between them throughout the record to help tell the story of each song.”
“The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for whatever happens next,” Steiner added. “There are plenty of good days, days filled with friendship and love, and then there are days when I dwell on things and desperately want to bridge the gap. It’s my whole life, you know? So, for me, this record is a document of all of those days stitched together, like a quilt in a time capsule, just waiting to get dug up when the time is right.”
Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Ratboys.
ingin’ to an Empty Chair Cover Artwork:
Singin’ to an Empty Chair Tracklist:
1. Open Up
2. Know You Then
3. Light Night Mountains All That
4. Anywhere
5. Penny in the Lake
6. Strange Love
7. The World, So Madly
8. Just Want You to Know the Truth
9. What’s Right?
10. Burn It Down
11. At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood
