Ratboys start Singin’ to an Empty Chair by walking straight up to the problem. “Live in reverse, go back in time,” Julia Steiner sings on Open Up, then comes the line that hangs over the whole record: “What’s it gonna take to open up?” It’s conversational but not casual. She’s choosing the hard version of honesty, the version where you don’t get to control the other person’s reaction. You just put the words in the room and live with the silence after.
The band back her up with motion and lift. Ratboys have always had that sunshower thing, guitars that sparkle without turning glossy, drums that can pop and punch without flattening everything into power-pop. Here, they keep the brightness but stop using it as camouflage. When Steiner promises, “I won’t say I told you so,” the music swells with determination, not triumph. The chorus repeats the question again and again, not as a hooky trick. She’s trying different keys on the same lock.
That sense of looking back, wincing, then trying again hits immediately on Know You Then. The lyric sits with a specific kind of regret: realizing you would have behaved differently if you’d known what you know now. “I didn’t know you then,” she repeats, and each time it lands with different weight. There’s a cruel snapshot in there, a kid “walking with your head down,” lunch taken, jokes made when you’re not around. Steiner doesn’t dress it up.
Then Ratboys get weird, and it feels central to the record, not like a side quest. Light Night Mountains All That opens the album’s wormhole tendency, full of images that don’t follow linear narrative. “Reach around the cornerstone,” she sings, addressing someone who seems present and unreachable at the same time. The song keeps flipping its lighting: “outside where the day is night,” “outside where the light is dark.” Every time the line “you didn’t care” returns, it hits like a dull bell. Dave Sagan’s guitar work here acts like a nervous system, bursts of texture and colour appearing, disappearing, then appearing again. The band sound like they’re building the track while it’s happening, letting structure show its seams.
Anywhere pulls the camera closer. It’s anxious, funny, and not particularly interested in making itself tidy. “I can’t help my panic attack,” Steiner admits, then catches herself in the same breath, trying to “make sense of what is out there.” The hook is pure attachment: “I’m going anywhere that you’re going,” repeated until it becomes both promise and problem. Ratboys play it with caffeinated bounce, but the lyric keeps tugging at you the way a worry does when you’re trying to act normal.
Penny in the Lake is where the band’s humour comes in as a coping mechanism that refuses to apologize. “What’s for breakfast, Jesus Christ?” is a perfect throwaway line that also tells you exactly what kind of morning this is. The song stacks scenes: “berries dropping from the sky,” “bugs are writing books with their eyes,” and the repeated image of the penny itself, “someone’s wish they forgot.” That last line lingers. The whole track has this bright day quality with a strange shadow moving behind it.
Strange Love leans into a different looseness. It’s late-night, half-tipsy, wide awake at “half past two,” with a mind “on fire.” The language is simple, even sing-songy, but the feeling isn’t. “Giving up is hard to do,” she sings, then lands on the desperate part: “hold on for dear life.” Ratboys don’t overplay it. They let the steadiness do the work, the song acting like a hand on your shoulder rather than a speech.
The World, So Madly is one of the record’s quiet gut punches. It’s about helplessness without melodrama, that sense of watching things change faster than your body can process. “You blink now it’s overcast,” she sings, and the repetition of “nothing’s gonna last” doesn’t sound like philosophy. It sounds like a thought you can’t stop thinking. The imagery gets surreal but stays domestic: pain floating “like a red balloon,” tied to a “skinny wrist.” It’s a gentle song that keeps tightening its grip.
Then comes the centrepiece, Just Want You to Know the Truth, and Ratboys let it sprawl past the 8-minute mark because the subject demands time. Steiner rewinds to “Wolf Pen,” to construction sites, to “sawdust,” to “Christmas Eve,” to hiding until it’s time to eat. These are the remembered textures of a relationship that mattered enough to injure you later. The chorus doesn’t posture. “I just want you to know the truth,” she repeats, and it sounds less like accusation, more like necessity.
The song’s most devastating moment is also its least theatrical. “We cleaned out the house,” she sings, and then the line about finding “skeletons” nobody knew about. It’s just a door opening onto something you can’t unsee. From there, the lyric turns to boundaries drawn in real time: “I blocked your telephone,” and the line that cuts deepest, “it’s what you didn’t do.” Ratboys stretch the ending so the feeling can echo. Sagan’s lead guitar sounds like a person trying to say one more thing, then stopping, then trying again.
What’s Right? keeps the restless, dreamlike logic going. The opening image, “running down the laundry line,” is strange and specific, like something your brain invents when it’s exhausted. The chorus is a plea disguised as certainty: “I think you know what’s right,” repeated until it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself too. Then the song slips into that surreal internal monologue, “my subconscious is a man,” offering comfort that also feels unsettling.
Burn It Down slows things down but still hits with blunt force, and the bluntness is strategic. “Young boy pouring that gas,” Steiner begins, narrating a scene she can’t stop watching. The refrain, “we gotta burn it down,” gets repeated like a chant that’s half protest, half panic. There’s a line that sounds like a jaw clench: “hands off our fuckin mouths,” and suddenly the song isn’t only personal. The guitars scrape and surge with the kind of ferocity that comes from being done, not from excitement. When she adds “deep down you know it’s wrong,” it sounds like an admission that doesn’t stop anything, just names what everyone in the room already feels.
The closer, At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood, doesn’t wrap things up neatly. It’s about staying together through the mess, not celebrating getting through it. Steiner sings about “crying in the rain,” then choosing to “laugh through the pain,” and the line works because it’s practical, not inspirational. Hold onto your pillow tight” sounds like real 2 a.m. advice, not poetry. When she admits that even peace takes time, “it takes a few days just to slow back down,” the band let the song sway and glow without forcing a grand finish.
What makes Singin’ to an Empty Chair stick is how little it strains for significance. Ratboys trust the listener to hear the stakes in the details, the repeated questions, the stubborn returns to memory, and the way humour and dread sit in the same verse without cancelling each other out. The chair stays empty. The songs keep talking anyway.
Singin’ to an Empty Chair will be released on February 6 via New West Records.
Photo: Miles+Kalchik
Share this :
