Ratboys’ New Album Brings Major Draw to Bluebird Show

Ratboys is having a breakthrough. 

“The show that we just played in D.C. was our biggest headline show to date, and that sold out,” says Julia Steiner, the band’s singer and resident wordsmith. “It was like 1,200 tickets, so it’s kind of crazy.”

The band’s critically lauded new record, Singin’ to an Empty Chair, has attracted the attention of everyone from venues across the country to Zane Lowe.

Part of the reason for the album’s success is that while writing it, Steiner had a breakthrough of her own, courtesy of something the title hints at.

“The empty chair was something that my therapist mentioned to me in an offhand way,” says Steiner of the therapeutic technique used to help resolve internal conflicts or interpersonal issues by having the person speak to an empty chair as if the person is seated across from them.

“It doesn’t take a lot of prep. … If you have a chair and a room, you’re good,” she continues. So, after politely asking her partner, Ratboys lead guitarist David Sagan, to exit the room, Steiner recorded a voice memo of a simulated conversation with a shall-remain-nameless relative from whom she is estranged.

“Recording that was really helpful for me because then I could listen back and make notes about certain feelings,” she says, “but also memories and even just little word choices that I wouldn’t have initially picked up on.”

Afterward, Steiner wrote the lyrics to the album’s eleven songs over the next year before decamping to rural Wisconsin with the rest of the Chicago-born band to track everything, with Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla once again handling production. Songs from Singin’ to an Empty Chair will be a highlight of Ratboys’ upcoming show at the Bluebird Theater on Monday, April 13.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Steiner says she felt more than comfortable working through the emotionally weighty songs with her bandmates.

“They’re fully apprised of all the lore and history,” she says with a chuckle. “The dynamic that I cherish most in the band is just how much I trust my bandmates and vice versa.

“This is going to sound insane, but yesterday I was watching the Dream Theater drum auditions on YouTube, and they were talking about when Mike Portnoy left the band in 2010 and how it really felt like they were losing a family member,” she continues. “They had been to funerals and weddings together, confided in each other at the darkest, most challenging parts of their lives, and that really resonated with me because it is so true. And that’s what we’ve built.”

Steiner says that shared experience fosters greater trust in herself as a songwriter.

“I feel myself with each record becoming more confident in my own voice,” she says. “Also, we’re becoming more capable in the studio and relating to each other with our own musical language. I mean, we’ve gone through so many different phases. Like, I didn’t own an electric guitar for the first few years we were in a band together, and now we’re here.”

“Here” is the best album of the band’s decade-plus career. Singin’ to an Empty Chair is Ratboys’ most accomplished and diverse record to date. 

It begins with “Open Up,” where Steiner gently invites her empty-chair inspiration — and the listener — to do so over plaintive guitar strums, before the song builds to a righteous power-pop crescendo. On “Anywhere,” Steiner sings about having an anxious attachment style over a melody that could have been ripped straight from an early Posies record. The album then takes a three-song dip into alt-country before it peaks with “Just Want You to Know the Truth,” the eight-and-a-half-minute centerpiece where Steiner investigates her history with the person and what led to their estrangement.

It’s not all heavy, though. Steiner, a former English major, litters her songs with fun phrases that stick in your brain. Just a few lines into “Open Up,” Steiner drops the gem, “bending my back to break the ice.” On “Penny in the Lake,” she jokes that the song’s title is “just someone’s wish they forgot.” 

Steiner cites her college classes as a strong influence not just on the words she was writing, but also on the importance of context and delivery. 

“One of the most humbling discoveries that I made was in poetry class because I thought, ‘This is great, I’ll just submit my lyrics and won’t have to do homework,’” she reminisces. “Then I realized immediately that the rhythm of the spoken word versus how lyrics fit into a song is so different and context-dependent. You can have a song where a single syllable is held out for emphasis till the end of time, and if you read that on the page, it won’t read the same way. I think interacting with language in this way is an exciting excuse to just appreciate how words work together.”

Fans seem to be excited, too.

“People seem genuinely energized by the new tunes,” says Steiner. “A friend of ours in New York mentioned to me how many conversations she overheard at the show about how it was people’s first time seeing us. … I just kind of assumed that everyone [there] would have already been to shows of ours before.”

Steiner also notes how happy she’s been to play some historic venues along the way, and some she hopes to play in the future.

“A dream of mine is to play Red Rocks,” she says. “Just to be amongst the ancient geology of the Earth and play these songs that are so visceral and elemental to us.”

There is even a possibility that she might reconcile with the album’s inspiration by then. “I mailed a CD and a postcard right before the first leg of this tour, so we’ll see what happens.”

Ratboys, 8 p.m. Monday, April 13, Bluebird Theater, 3317 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are available via AXS.