Ratboys: Singin' to an Empty Chair

""Burn It Down" is part of a penultimate three-song suite in which Ratboys are at their most ambitious, each track exceeding five minutes, each arranged so that their structures shift like bends in a road. "What's Right?" shares the journeying feeling of "Black Earth, WI," though it's a little more enervated, trying to shake off that thing it can't stop thinking about."

"This is where "What's Right?" ends up in its second half; as a corresponding chord change darkens the sky, Steiner's lyrics sleepwalk into a dream state where she meets parts of herself that resist understanding. "My subconscious is a man," she sings, "He softly says to me/'I'll vanish when you need me to/I'll hold you when you sleep.'" As in a dream, the lyrics resist literal sense, even though they seem to say something about reality that is otherwise inexpressible:"

Ratboys place "Burn It Down" within a penultimate three-song suite where each track exceeds five minutes and features shifting, road-like structures. "What's Right?" carries a journeying, enervated mood that circles an obsessive thought. Much of Singin' to an Empty Chair feels engineered for a purposeless road trip, producing half-asleep, wandering thoughts and unresolved outward-reaching music. The song's second half darkens with a chord change as lyrics enter a dream state in which the subconscious appears as a male figure offering vanishing presence and comfort. The album's emotional core centers on domestic estrangement and fragmented, traumatic memories set against distorted guitars.

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