REVIEW: Ratboys - Singin' to an Empty Chair

Meeting the moment

50:46 // February 6, 2026 // New West

As a music fan who has (predictably) become enamored with the batch of indie-meets-country acts which have emerged in recent years, Ratboys didn’t stand out of the pack until now. Like many, I discovered the Chicago group through their 2023 effort The Window, and while it’s a rather enjoyable listen, my personal qualm was that the band failed to establish a strong identity - the songs all over the place, a little bit of this, a little bit of that - and the results ultimately felt a touch sterile. My leading lights in this scene all manage to differentiate themselves in some way or another - take Wednesday’s shoegaze/punk/country fusions, Friendship’s Bermanesque sorrowful humor, or Fust’s twangy gift for hooks - and Ratboys felt uneasily adrift, notably behind the movement’s standard-bearers.

It’s ironic, then, that only one album later, I’d be heaping glorious praise on this collective, given they haven’t really changed their formula much. If anything, Singin’ to an Empty Chair doubles down on Ratboys’ penchant for a varied sound, but they’ve sure made me a believer this time around. By my count, the group basically relies upon three different styles on this album - the first being Yo La Tengo-y fuzzy guitar indie, the second being laid-back power pop melodicism, and third being twangy backroads Americana. These eleven songs, ranging from brief ditties to sprawling epics, all lean in one of these directions, but multiple strains intersect, entwine, and pull apart throughout the meandering runtime, doing wonders for the album’s feel as a living, breathing entity.

Perhaps even more vital, though, is the record’s thematic coherence. The Bandcamp page formulates this record as “the beginning of an important dialogue with a close loved one vocalist Julia Steiner finds herself estranged from”. These tunes reliably evoke that feeling - a persistent pondering of the past, shorn off from present reality, irrevocably distant. Memories are constantly refracted back, but something’s changed, summoning only a deep well of sadness. Certainly this mood resonates alarmingly deeply with me right now, not because of a personal experience of alienation from a close friend or family member, but because this sense of jarring fracture mirrors the shock, and even grief, I’m personally grappling with as I sense the loss of a country I love and thought I knew, warts and all. Singin’ to an Empty Chair sounds comfortable and comforting, an easy companion in tough times, but its nostalgic qualities are a mirage, backwards-looking and scarred by what’s to come. There’s some residual warmth to be gleaned, of course, but this album refuses to look away from reality - its emotional impact derives from its acknowledgement of the raw edges, the pain of what’s been lost. These are thoughtful songs with a ton of spirit, but they don’t offer answers, and prove to be brutally sad, with even the stunning beauty of tunes like “Penny in the Lake” and the gorgeous second-half masterpiece “Just Want You to Know the Truth” being the aching kind.

It’s notable, too, that “Burn It Down”, the only track here which is truly overt in its political messaging, doesn’t revel in its repeated use of the titular phrase - that mantra is instead grudging and even a bit dreary, simply forced by circumstance. It’s the right choice for me, and that’s a shockingly consistent thread throughout Singin’ to an Empty Chair, as it’s not every day that an album comes along which feels just right, especially at a point in time when everything feels broken beyond repair. This is the type of record to fill my ragged heart with all sorts of emotions, and to commiserate with me over even the bleakest of them. The beautifully rustic closer “At Peace in the Hundred Acre Wood”, an ode to the small moments of love, joy, and peace still possible in a scary world, serves as the perfect little balm to close the journey. I can’t say whether Singin’ to an Empty Chair will go down in history as a classic, but it sure has moved me in ways I didn’t even know I needed. Give it a try - Ratboys have saved you a seat.

9.0/10