Making Noise for the Ones You Love: Ratboys

"Radiohead in a major key": A dad and his son bond over their new fave indie band.

My 19-year old younger son Noel has a new fave indie band: Ratboys. I have a new fave indie band too: Ratboys. I thank Noel for turning me on to them. I am especially glad that he and I made a joint decision to see them in NYC just three weeks ago from the night of writing this, because we now have a fave new live band as well.

I could go on, and I did initially set about writing a village elder perspective appreciation of a band at the heart of hipster indie, but eventually - and inadvertently, it speaks to my recent post Generation Gap? What Generation Gap? – I decided I might get the point across better if Noel and I had a Zoom conversation about why we both love Ratboys, and printed the results.

We talked about the Chicago quartet for well over an hour. What you have is, of necessity, an edit, and it’s still a full magazine article’s worth! You also have music, videos, photos, and Noel’s short playlist Imaginary Ratboys Cover Show. I kept the conversational tone and in fact would have shared the audio if it was shorter and a little tighter, if just for Noel’s one-man impersonations of certain songs: the lad is at college studying music production so he’s a good person to talk to about the sonic ingredients at the heart of emotional rock music.

I hope you enjoy the conversation that follows; I especially hope you enjoy what you see, hear, and read about Ratboys. We clearly think they are special, and we are clearly not alone: there are five albums out there to prove as much (all on the excellent indie label Topshelf) and we only got to talk about two of them. If you’ve had a similar discovery experience of late – be it a new fave indie band, a band that your kid turned you onto, or indeed, if you know enough about Ratboys yourself - I hope you’ll feel fit too comment. The indie scene… It’s Alive!

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Tony: So, Noel, what was it about Ratboys that drew you in when you first heard them? And do you remember how you first heard them?

Noel: I do remember how I first heard them. I was using a website called songslikex dot com where you enter a song and it will spit out a playlist of similar songs or fitting songs. There are also various sliders you can set to narrow it in. I set the BPM to my running BPM, which is about 165 BPM, because the song I put in was “Undoer” by Geese, and I wanted that type of song, but at the right BPM. I did not listen to the playlist before I went on a run to it, but when “Crossed That Line” by Ratboys came on, I just kept looping it. I kept hitting the back button. And I was probably running a lot faster to it, as well!

-So you heard “Crossed That Line.” What did you do from there?

I decided to listen to the album (The Window from 2023). And I don't know how far I got before this started happening, but before I knew it, I was just repeating the fourth track, “It's Alive!” The more I listened to it, the more I just kept listening to it until before I knew it, I was just looping it. I didn't even really notice. I was just looping “It's Alive” all the time. And it was like my new favorite song.

-So let's talk about “It's Alive!” then. I want to understand what you think distinguishes Ratboys from all the other four-piece indie rock groups.

... So for like a year and a half from January 2022 all the way till I started college in the fall of 2023, I was listening to the Radiohead song “Let Down” an insane amount. I was looping it so much because I really like songs that feel very epic and have a huge outro that sort of just sobs almost. [And I ended up thinking] well, am I listening to Radiohead because I like Radiohead so much, or is it... Is it because of the emotion? And I eventually realized that the sadness of their music was just an unfortunate side effect of finding the best band in the world. And so for a while, I was like, man, I really wish there was a band that did what Radiohead did that I liked, but wasn't so sad. Like,Radiohead but in a major key. I’m not saying all major key songs are happy and all minor key songs are sad, but... You get what I mean, right? So, “It's Alive!” did what “Let Down” did, but it had a much more optimistic tone. (Below: The promo video for “It’s Alive.”)

-I get the feeling that what connected with you was the emotion that's invested in the music by Ratboys.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I listen to where I'm like, man, this probably is really doing it for someone who's in the mood of this music, but I can't relate to this at all. But Ratboys has been my band this year that has connected with me on a more emotional level, like Geese was in 2023, like Radiohead was in 2022.

-That's a great way of putting it. How quickly did you decide to go back and look at what else they had in their catalog? Because it turns out, The Window is the fifth studio album already.

I didn't even think about that, I just got to know The Window so well. I am now convinced that every single song on the window is a banger. Please write that down. “Banger” is the word. Do you know what I mean by banger?

-Oh yeah, I totally know what you mean by banger. And I don't disagree. I love every single song on The Window. So, my take is that sometimes you share something with me, and I might follow other links from other sources and listen to, you know, hot new Indie acts. And I have a sense sometimes of like, yeah, it's all very good, but I've been there, done that, and It’s not really connecting with me. And maybe I'm not the audience, because hey, I'm 60, I'm not meant to be the audience, and I'm sure it's all very cool, but, you know, it's not doing it for me. And then when you were home this summer you played me Ratboys, like, “Dad, listen to this.” And I immediately felt, “Ooh! There's something cool about this…”

Which song, do you remember?

-It would have been “It's Alive!” which, funny enough, is not necessarily my favorite song on the window.

What's your favorite song on The Window?

-My favorite song on The Window is “No Way”. I love the lyrics on it, the chorus is fantastic.

I love how it's got all of the jam stuff of “Paranoid Android,” but it has the outro dissension and... also, the simplicity of “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles. The outro really reminds me of “Dear Prudence.”

-That's a good one. I think we've got to get to the fact that it's Julia Steiner. This is a female voice at the front of the band. And I like the idea of the chorus that says, “I'll take a penny for your thoughts and I'll throw it straight to hell/There's no way you'll control me again.” And that's pretty brutal.

What I also really like is that... It really sounds like she's saying, “there's no way you can troll me.” But then when I looked up the lyrics, it just said “control.”

-I like the idea of “there's no way you can troll me.” That's great. So anyway, how much did you discover about them - before we went to the live show - about this being sort of Julia's group, because her voice is, you know, pivotal.

I did not know it was a two-piece turned four-piece until way after the show and you told me.

-Yeah, it did start out as Julia and David Sagan.

It would explain why the cover of Printer's Devil [2020, cover below] is just two of them.

-Yeah, it would. Can you remember how it came about that we went to see them?

I probably just went on their website and looked at the tour page and Warsaw, Brooklyn came up, and I was like, “Dad I really want to go to this show but it’s at Warsaw.” Last year I really wanted to go see Geese at Warsaw but I couldn’t figure out transportation from college (SUNY Purchase) so I had to just sell my ticket. And you were like, ‘Hey, if you buy me a ticket, I'll drive you there.’ [Note: It was a 200-mile round trip for dad.] And I was like, ‘Deal!’ And it was also a co-headline with Palehound, and I didn't even know until the day of the show that You Bet was also opening for them. (And all for a $25 advance ticket.)

-We also didn't realize that Ratboys were not going to go on last. And one thing I find really, really interesting about the scene as it exists now is that, here's a band formed in 2010. It's formed by Julian Steiner and Dave Sagan. And so that's 14 years ago…

Wait… what? Their first album was 2015. I didn't know they formed that long before that.

-Yeah, it can take a long time. Some bands release an album quicker, but it's not unusual to go from playing gigs to releasing a single to maybe an EP or something like that. And I mean, it's great that they've done five albums in eight years because some groups take a lot longer than that. But what really hit me – and this is not musical, this is just about the business - is that here's a fantastic group that actually magazines like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork and Paste have considered to be making albums of the year since pretty much day one, and they have to co-headline and be the middle act at Warsaw, which is not the biggest venue in the world, let alone New York City, even as a highly acclaimed act that people say is superb live. And it just really struck me that this is the reality of being an indie rock band in the 2020s...You do a lot of gigging for, you know, however long, you can get the press attention, but you have to work so bloody hard and the results don't come in immediately. It's not like Paste magazine says, wow, The Window was fifth best album of 2023, and then you're like, “cool, we'll book ourselves into a headline at Webster Hall, thank you very much.” It doesn't work like that. It makes me admire bands that can perform with as much absolutely self-evident energy and enthusiasm as we saw in Ratboys.

I was blown away by the distinctiveness of their live show, even though they were just such an obvious, like, four-piece doing three, four-minute rock-pop stuff, songs with twisted lyrics about love affairs and life issues. And so, in many ways it sounds like there's nothing original but like there's everything original to this band and there is something about the way they delivered it live that they are now my favorite indie band. I can’t call them a new band because they’re not but they’re my favourite not famous indie band.

They're your new favorite band.

-Exactly. They're my new favorite indie band.

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Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith, posts twice a week, the longer post typically being at the weekend. If you like what you read, please subscribe to receive the posts via e-mail. If you would like to support my work further, receive bonus posts and podcasts, and just generally help keep the creative process moving please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Or just buy a Ratboys record from Bandcamp. (Conversation continues.)

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Tell me about the song that I went, “Oh yeah, this is really special.” It's “Printer’s Devil,” isn't it? It's the title track of their last album.

(Noel sing-imitates it for a full minute…) I think you can actually describe the song even better than I can, because the reason you liked it, you said like, “Oh man, as a fan of bands like Spiritualized, I really liked that.” That wasn't why I liked it. I never dove into that music so much. I think I just liked it because... I can't really put words to it. It's just the emotion. Lyrics don't matter to me quite as much, just as long as they don't sound stupid. And that's a general music thing for me. But the line, “The fire in your eyes is open/I was hoping for something.” Dude, I don't even know what that means,

-You don’t have to…

But that is so cool. That is so cool.

-I agree 100%.

“The fire in your eyes is open/I was just hoping for something.” Dude, that's just so good. That's so good.

-I know. I know. And I think that's Julia's gift. She can come up with these couplets. There's only so many words in the English language, and she's finding such fresh ways to use them. And I agree wholeheartedly, and you've got to bear in mind, I have listened to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of songs over the years! And I'm like, “Noel's right. That's a great couplet.” And I think you may have first played it for me in the car. I love the way that it builds up. It's one of those one- to two-chord songs that just repeats the riff, repeats the riff. I wish it went on longer, actually…

It should be 10 minutes long.

-Yeah, exactly. It's got that Velvet Underground-like sort of repetitiveness.

I told you that, right? My BOCES music production teacher told me that Velvet Underground was known for shows that would just hang on like one or two notes for like 10 minutes because it just was throbbing and he played me a live recording that was like 10 minutes long. I was like, “Oh, now I get it.” Yeah, that's what “Printer’s Devil” does. The repetition of that song is not what makes me like it. It doesn't make me dislike it either. That literally doesn't faze me.. It's just something about the way it feels and also the way the chorus comes in with that drum fill. And not just the drum fill, but the guitars … It's like it's just those choruses just bloom. And I think that's something every songwriter wants to hear about the choruses because I feel like that's the point of a chorus. And then the sort of shoe-gazed vocals that come in in the choruses too in that song with these harmonies. And then the guitar strums that are kind of in the rest of the song, but it just comes together into this big, like… I've never done acid, but I hope that's what acid feels like!

-(Dad laughs.) No comment! I think the repetition actually has more effect on you than you realize...

Well, I know, but it's not like, “oh, cool, it repeats.” I don't really care. If the repetition is what's making me like it, then that's not a decision I'm making. That's what I'm saying.

-Right. Okay. I agree with you on that. But what I really like is the song builds up the way that a Velvet Underground or a Spiritualized song might, but it just does these really cool little things in the five minutes. Like they add in some percussion on a verse, don't they?

I don't know what you mean by percussive, but there are these stray guitar licks. “Stray” as in they only last a couple seconds and they come in like once every 10 seconds it feels like. It's just like, so that you don't get bored, they just sprinkle something at you.

-Yeah, that's what they do, and they do it in ways you don't expect. Very often when something like, even a band that I think is one of the greatest there's ever been, Spiritualized, builds up, you kind of know what Jason is going to put in the mix next because he's following a very familiar building pattern. But what I loved about “Printer’s Devil” is I didn't know what was going to come next. And there is a core emotion. It's not even just those words you threw at me. There's something in there that actually gets inside me. Which is very rare.

Me too, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah. It's amazing.

And then another reason I like Ratboys, like I said about “It's Alive!” they have a lot of songs that do what the Radiohead song “Let Down” does, which is just a huge, epic outro. It makes you want to cry even if you don't. It really seems to grind, the end of that song. Like it's grating against something. It's like they're definitely turning some sort of knob, and then right as the song's about to end, they just like crank it, and then it ends!

-Yeah, yeah. I know, that's the other thing, it ends unexpectedly.

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Let's talk about the live show. Did you have any idea what to expect? Because on my end, I purposefully did not watch any live videos.

I'd watched a bunch, so I had some idea, but there were still some surprises. What I knew was going to happen was I had noticed from live videos that I really think they need a third guitar player on stage to match their recordings. Because either the guitars weren’t loud enough or weren’t midrange enough, or I felt like, these are three guitar songs, and they've only got two guitarists. So I had a sort of feeling of imbalance watching the videos, and I had the same thing live.

-Yeah, but that's a negative. I want to talk about the positives.

I still want to. You asked me. So I'm answering. What else did I expect? What I was not expecting was that when they got loud… I didn't think they were a quiet-loud band. I never thought of them as a Nirvana-type, quiet-loud, Pixies-type, right? So when we saw them and they would go from quiet and then the loud parts would just explode and they would start jumping around and they would be throwing their hands down the strings. I was not expecting that at all.

-Although they don't jump about in the way that bands jump around. They're just very engaged in the music.

Well, they do jump around at rare points. They save it.

-What I really liked is it's always great when a group has distinct personalities. And there's a quality to Julia, not just to these incredible couplets she comes up with. She's unbelievably happy on stage, and yet she's singing pretty serious songs. So that's a strange combination. She is great at introducing songs while half strumming the guitar, introducing a song in a very, very positive way and not letting the show slow down. She gets a lot of information in without taking up time when they only get an allotted 60 minutes or whatever. (Below: Julia Steiner performing “The Window” at Warsaw, Nov 16, 2024.)

She's got a really pleasing, pleasant, like uplifting demeanor and she exudes character. And there's a reason sometimes people become singer-songwriters and decide to front bands, because maybe they get told somewhere down the line, “You know what? You're a natural at this. You should do this. You're good on stage. People will watch you.” And so I could barely take my eyes off her, except she was playing the Dan Electro Flying V. I just have a thing about Flying Vs, even if they are Dan Electros.

But then Dave Sagan has this look of a sort of Fu Manchu kind of character. You know, he's an amazing guitarist, and he looks like he's stumbled into the band after taking, not an acid trip, but maybe a peyote trip or something out in the deserts of Arizona or Nevada, and he's playing these like very acid-like guitar lines, but because Julia's playing quite a familiar rhythm guitar sound, the blend is really great and it's kind of unusual. He's not your usual guitarist, but there's no showing off in him. And I don't like show-off guitarists, as you know. He's playing some pretty cool stuff, but he's making no big deal about it. He doesn't sing, he's not looking for attention. He's just got that weird mustache and sort of long hair look to him. And you're like, “Wow! That's a great guitarist…”

-And then the drummer, Marcus (Nuccio), just looks so happy to be on stage, right? He's just like, “yeah, man.”

He looks giddy.

-Giddy. He looks like Dave Grohl if Dave Grohl was like 30 years younger.

This is the face. (Imitates it!)

-That's right. And he had a baseball cap on and he looked a little bit like that kid, Ash, who got to play with IDLES, who's like all of 12 years old. It's like if Ash could have been confident enough to really let go, Marcus looked like that, like a young dude with a baseball cap, like, ‘Oh my God, I'm in a rock and roll band and I'm playing on stage in front of an audience in New York. I dreamed of this since I was four. I'm the luckiest guy on earth!’

Yeah. He throws his sticks onto the drums in a very celebratory way too. Like, I almost feel like he knows he doesn't have to hit that hard, but he really, really wants to.

-Right, right. I want to give a shout out for Sean (Neumann), the bass player as well, he's the one guy who looks like he totally belongs in an indie rock band.

I will say this about him. I can't remember a specific example of this we saw live, but I did see a video of “It's Alive!” where the bass player and drummer were so tight. They were so locked in. The bass player was hitting the notes the exact same time that the drum beat would also hit them. It was precisely the same time. That’s what you call road hot?

-They have played live a lot. I've done some reading up on them, and this is a band that has gigged a lot and played together a lot. And that's the thing that you know from being in Rock Academy: actually, practice can make you pretty close to perfect. And they've hit that point of 10,000 hours of practice by now, I would imagine. And so, yeah, you're quite right, they're locked in. (Below: Ratboys performing “Making Noise for the Ones You Love,” the opening song from The Window, at Warsaw, Nov 16 2024.)

There's one other thing that impressed me. I think we went to see them, was it maybe 10 days after the Presidential election? And everyone was still sort of weirded out by it. And Julia did make a point of just saying something that I think a lot of us have honed in on now, that “Yes, the world sucks. It's terrible. We're scared for this country.” It was along the lines of, “At our merch stand, we've got three different organizations we'd like you to consider donating to.” I know one of them was to do with abortion rights, women's right to choose. There was a couple of others.

There was a Palestine fund in there too.

-So that would be the second one. What she did say was along the lines of, and I'm very much paraphrasing, “Yes, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. We're as scared as you are. But we're musicians. We are here to express our emotions musically, try and make your lives better, the world a better place. This is what we do. We're all in this together.” And I understand that you can't ask a band to write political lyrics if that's not what comes easily. I just liked the way that she acknowledged the state of the world, that they're happy to do their little bit by trying to raise funds at every gig, and that they're here because they're musicians and they form part of the world that I think I would like you to grow up in. You know what I'm getting at?

Yeah.

-And everybody's got a place there. We need young activists, but we also need young musicians. They're not that young anymore if they've been going for 14, 15 years. I genuinely don’t know if Julia and David are a couple couple or just a musical couple…

I was wondering that.

-…It’s not an answer I’ve seen clearly stated.

I really like how Julia puts on, I don't know if it is her accent or if she's putting it on…It's this like puppy dog accent. It's like she's adding a sort of sweetness, a sort of talking sweetness to the singing. You don't notice it quite as much on the recording, but in every live video and at the show, she'll look up at the sky. It's not just the talking accent, though. Now that I think of the song, “My Hands Grow” (from Printer’s Devil),I think it's also just like she's using, maybe it's, would you call it “head voice”? It's not just the pitch. She is singing high at the same pitch. She goes way up because it sounds cute.

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-So what else do you want to mention about them musically, Noel?

Well, one way I know I really like them is that there are at least several songs that I have had on an insane level of loop. Which is only something I can say for bands I really like, not just songs I really like. I'm just looking at the playlist I made that's very short [click on image above to hear in Qobuz]. These are all songs that I have played endlessly for a really long time. I would only do that if it really, really resonated with me. And they're not all for the same reason. “The Window” is in large part because of the part that goes, “you'll always be my girl.” Something about the way the guitars sparkle there and the fast hi-hat and the very serious nature of the line, “you'll always be my girl,” Add to that when I learned that the song was apparently written about one of Julia's grandparents having to, because of COVID restrictions, they had to watch their spouse die through a window in the hospital.

-Her grandfather had to say goodbye to his wife through a hospital window, yeah.

And so when I learned that, then I understood how serious the song was. But it's so bubbly and happy in the music. And I did tear up to that part a bunch of times. But then the reason I looped “Printer's Devil” was because it sounded like, you know how a movie will end, but it will end on a feeling of new beginnings? It's not a happily-ever after movie. “Printer's Devil” feels like the end and a new beginning at the same time. Yeah.

-Yeah, I hear you. And actually, it was the end of their album. And in many ways, it set the tone for the next album. There is that as well. Also, I need to say, related to The Window, and I'm not sure if this is the house that's on the cover, it may well be, but there was also the matter of actually going back to the old house and having to clear it out. And she did a lot of songwriting there, Julia. So there was this double emotion about grandfather having to say goodbye to grandma through a hospital window during COVID, but also about going back to a house where you have childhood memories. And if you combine those childhood memories with death and having to clear out an old house, then that will put you in a very emotional, fragile perspective that can enable some pretty great songs to come out.

Yeah, I remember telling you that I thought this was a concept album back in the summer because I noticed, again, I'm not a big lyrics listener, so I can't be sure, but the word “window” was in many of those songs. So I was like, well, that, plus there's a song called “The Window,” plus the cover is a window, plus the album's called The Window. Maybe you can't call it a concept album, but you can at least say that the window is related to all the songs. Or many of them, I should say.

-So what it was, according to this massive interview in Paste, was that Julia found herself sorting through decades of memories and artifacts as her parents cleared out her childhood home in Louisville, Kentucky. And then she went down there with Dave, and decided to finalize and demo some of the new songs. And they camped out in her parents' old bedroom, which they found funny. So maybe they are a couple, the way that that's said. “The house had tall ceilings. We got to just turn up and camp out in that space and try to go out with a bang as far as just writing some music in that house for one more time.”

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-…When Ratboy finished playing at Warsaw, there were immediately like 50 to 100 people queuing up at their merch stand, spending money. And you were one of them.

I had wanted to buy one of their albums for ages. I was waiting for that show. It was like delayed gratification almost. I was waiting to do it at that show as a treat.

-Had I known at the time just how incredibly cool the artwork was for The Window, I might have bought it as well. It's a gatefold sleeve, and that's good enough. Then there are inner sleeves that have the lyrics on them and more pictures. So this is a really expensive package. But the real cool thing is there are windows cut out of the artwork on the front and on the insides. It's one of those where the inner sleeve needs to be put in the right way. And it kind of has these little snapshots from touring and stuff, doesn't it?

Yeah, like Polaroid pictures.

-It's an unbelievably cool artwork. And then the other thing that's really cool is it's like, well, it's 11 songs. So why is it a gatefold sleeve? 11 songs is too few for a double album, even if you might like to spread it out over more than two sides. So what do Ratboys do, Noel?

…So on the second side of the second disc, there's no music. It's just “what's the one thing you love?” written over and over again, which is a repeating line from one of their songs. It looks like it was sort of added on, like it was dripped on somehow. It's poking out. You have to hold it up to the light in the right way to really see this. Otherwise, you might just go, “That's weird, I don't see any grooves. It just looks like a blank, flat disc.” Then once you hold it up to the right light, you see, “What's the one thing you love?” And it spirals in. That's all very cool.

-I just love that it's a three-sided album. I've never seen that in all my years. I've never known somebody do a three-sided album. I've got one-sided records…

That's one of those things where it's just like, “Why wouldn't you?”

-Yeah. I know. It's bizarre. It's great. It's wonderful.

And also, that is definitely the right album to have a vinyl release. I don't know vinyl as well as you do, but it seems like some vinyl comes out more saturated and some vinyl comes out more pristine. I actually really like how this album sounds very saturated on the vinyl. It should sound that way. I sometimes even felt that the song “It's Alive!” digitally was too clear. I loved the song so much, but the treble was so, it was so shiny. That was what turned me towards the song. But sometimes I would sort of fatigue my ear because I was listening to it so much. But then the vinyl took that away and I was glad that it did. Because then I could really just get into the drive of the guitars more. Whereas when I listen to that song digitally, I'm really listening to the ride cymbal. Add to that that I tend to listen on very trebly headphones. And when my equipment is not trebly, I turn the treble up most of the time anyway.

-Yeah, you turned the treble up on the vinyl at my place.

Well, that was not just because I like treble. That was because it didn't seem like the record came with much treble. But what's good is that you could turn up the treble and it didn't sound like you turned up the treble. It sounded good.

-I hear you.

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-I've got to say one final thing. There's a song on The Window called “I Want You (Fall 2010)”, which is clearly, you know, the date….

I love that song so much.

-Well, that's the year that the two of them met, Julia and David. I really like this lyric: “I could tell that we'd be friends from the first moment/We walked around and started talking all about our favorite bands/Got a quarter dog and snuck you in at 2 a.m./Now we're driving around Michigan/hours flying by with the windows down/just listening to maps and atlases.”

Windows! The window…

-I know, so that's the start. That's the song that they obviously feel comfortable writing now, about the friendship that they've had all these years and what created that friendship. By the way, they met at Notre Dame (Noel’s mom’s alma mater). They're considered a Chicago group as their home city. I just wanted to make that point, that they're a Midwestern rock band. There's something about Chicago, which is one of America's biggest and most storied cities.

I've heard that people really fall in love with that city. I've never been there, so I don't know why. What's funny is the reason I thought Fall 2010 was the year it was recorded at first, like it was a bonus track, was because it starts off sounding kind of “janky.” Like it doesn't sound as professional as the rest of the album at first. Like “Bad Reaction” (the finale) sounds so commercial by comparison. The bass is so big in the guitar. The gain is all the way up on the preamp, it seems. But “I Want You” just feels like... They didn't try to separate the instruments so hard at the beginning. I don't know. It's like, not crunchy. That guitar lick there in the middle of the song is a very nostalgic sound for me. I think they really tried to drive the nostalgia on the song through the whole thing. But that guitar lick especially, that kind of reverb... It really is the type of reverb of nostalgic songs for me, like “Pumped Up Kicks” [by Foster The People] reminds me of that. The vocals of the chorus of “Pumped Up Kicks” very much remind me of that guitar lick's reverb. “I Want You” also has a giant epic breakdown outro. This band really likes their outros, and I really like my outros, so this is also why this band is for me. I really like big, explosive outros. Yeah!

-They did say to the audience, that that's it for live shows for now. They're going to be recording a new album starting in January. And I really, really love that this is not one of those indie bands that goes, “Hey, guess what? We got three side projects and we're going to make another record when we feel like it. And we're going to go back to our jobs, whatever they are.” Ratboys are like, “We're a band. We're coming off the road. We've got a new album to make.” I mean, listen, if R.E.M. could do their first five albums in five years, there's no reason indie bands can't continue to do that if they've got momentum. And Ratboys have helped create their own momentum because they haven't stopped.

…And I'm just glad that they're keeping that momentum going up. They obviously love being a live band. It's very easy to be jaded about playing, to be frustrated. And Ratboys just looked so happy to be playing to us. It's not an easy lifestyle, especially when people get into their 30s and beyond.

I think it's just, it is their life.

…As the opening words to the documentary video below confirm. Ratboys can be found at ratboys band dot com. Noel Fletcher’s mixing page can be found at https://noeljfletcher.wixsite.com/mixing. Thank you for reading.