By Manuel Gemperli
I forgot who it was, but I once heard somebody describe Jason Isbell’s “Elephant” as “devastatingly beautiful”. Devastatingly beautiful. What a wonderful term. To me, 2025’s most devastatingly beautiful song was “A Tear For Lucas”, the closing track on Chat Pile’s and Hayden Pedigo’s great collab album “In The Earth Again”. I don’t know the backstory or who Raygun Busch is singing about, but damn, it is clear that this person must have meant the world to him. You can hear his voice crack at times, you can hear how he is close to or maybe even in tears while recording. It is devastating. It is beautiful. Not just that song but many other moments on that album made me think that Hayden Pedigo helped Chat Pile discover something that was always in them but that they only hinted at in the past – a rare talent for haunting, bleak, truly touching melodies.
Sometimes in anticipation of a band’s new album, you get that feeling that this will be the one where everything comes together, the one on which a group truly fulfills their full potential. When I heard the lead singles for Chat Pile’s new album “Who Loves The Sun” I got that feeling. My expectations grew mile high. Here it is now. And boy, did they deliver. It sounds like they gained the self-confidence to let all of their talents shine through, to embrace Busch’s knack for melodies. And those – dare I say it – hooks cut so much deeper delivered by this gruff voice. Everybody can make their voice sound raspy, but he sounds like he’s been through it all and you know that he means every word that he sings and screams.
Don’t worry, Chat Pile didn’t abandon what made their previous records so great. They still make terrific noise. Their skill to build heavy, dreary, desolate soundscapes is still on full display here. It’s the perfect soundtrack to the grim underbelly of 2020s America. Their music contains sonic nods to many of the great 90’s heavy tropes, but they never sound from the past. They’re chroniclers of the present. They’re a band of now. It’s cold comfort that terrifying times can at least produce amazing art.
Maybe it’s recency bias, maybe it’s the excitement of the new, but let me just say that I would be a very happy man if I ended up hearing a better heavy album this year. Dear God, is this brilliant.
0 comments