RATBOYS: When the Sun Explodes Tour 2026

 

Despite its title, Ratboys’ new album “Singin’ to an Empty Chair” is not defined by what’s missing. Rather, it’s the beginning of an important dialogue with a close loved one vocalist Julia Steiner finds herself estranged from.

The music on the band’s sixth studio album – its first for New West Records – fills the space that person left behind with 11 songs showcasing Ratboys at the peak of their powers — twangy, effervescent, as confident as they’ve ever been, and perhaps more emotionally interrogative than ever before. The four-piece Chicago band followed up 2023’s highly acclaimed “The Window” by reconvening with co-producer Chris Walla to begin tracking at a rural Wisconsin cabin before taking the songs to Steve Albini’s famed Electrical Audio studios in Chicago and later to Rosebud Studio in Evanston, Illinois. The results veer from bubbly power-pop on “Anywhere” to irresistible post-country on “Penny in the Lake,” along with heart-piercing ballads like “Just Want You to Know the Truth” and an exhilarating detour into the extraterrestrial on “Light Night Mountains All That,” which Steiner dubs the band’s mammoth “wormhole jam.”

“Singin’ to an Empty Chair” also marks the first Ratboys album written since Steiner began therapy, which the singer/lyricist credits for the clarity found across the album’s unflinching examinations of relationship and self. Fittingly, as the album begins by extending a hand into the void, it concludes with a scene of serenity – all while weaving candid honesty, humor, chaos, and whimsy along the way.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” Steiner says. “The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for whatever happens next.”

 

For ‘Sounds Like…’ Florry’s sophomore effort as a fully realized band, Francie Medosch and Co. decamped to Drop of Sun studios in the nest of the Blue Ridge Mountains to record with Asheville wunderkind Colin Miller, a critical voice behind the records of MJ Lenderman, Wednesday and Merce Lemon and a powerful songwriter in his own right. Three powerhouse days in late 2023 solidifi ed writing work done by the band earlier that summer in the now defunct Haw Creek compound under Miller’s guiding suggestion.

 

The result is a portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers, uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait. Lyrically, Medosch’s utterances are both careful and excessive, the product of sifting through the rubble of classic good-time media, and fi nding what works for both her and her community to reach the heights of abandon.
“The Jackass theme song was actually a really big influence on the new album.”