Chat Pile’s catalog runs tandem with an onslaught of debilitating feelings — despair, revolt, the total horror of looking at a burning world. But when they caught up with AP in 2024, they boiled it down to an acutely simple ethos: It’s music meant to get the room moving. “There’s all this talk about, ‘Oh, Chat Pile are these harrowing nightmare dystopia grim suicide music,’” bassist Stin pointed out. “Well, we also fucking rock. You can mosh to these songs, and you can nod your head along, but nobody mentions that. They’ll compare us to Swans until the sun goes down, but we’re closer to Van Halen, in my opinion, in the sense that there’s structure and it’s catchy.”
In that vein, Who Loves the Sun, made after they finished touring with Fleshwater last fall, puts a greater pop sensibility to the ugliness. Namely, “AI, genocide, climate change, the power elite, $$$$ hoarding pigs — all that shit fucks up your life and mine,” vocalist Raygun Busch said when they released “Deep Blue” in June. They also indulge in a wider set of tastes, challenging themselves to go way out — attempting to make a trip-hop song (“Same Rules”), becoming their “most emo-sounding” selves (“Shrine”), and throwing it back to Busch’s days as a lo-fi singer-songwriter (“October All the Time”).
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Speaking to its throughline, Stin added, “This album contains a healthy dose of the usual Chat Pile airing of grievances against the state of the world, but deeper at its heart, I feel Who Loves the Sun is grappling with the challenges of trying to keep one’s humanity in a time of extreme anti-humanity.” Below, he elaborates on the making of their heavy-hitting third full-length, track by track.
“Creature”
Someone recently told us that “Creature” is the most Chat Pile-Chat Pile song, which I think is true. Like, if you had to send one of our songs to the aliens to explain to them what Chat Pile is, this is probably the song you would send. I’m not sure why we’d be part of this intergalactic cultural exchange, but I’m flattered to be included, and may I add, please don’t vaporize me with your advanced alien weaponry.
“Deep Blue”
I keep saying this is like our version of a Billy Squier song because it’s the closest we’ll ever get to a big clap-along arena-rock banger. Squier’s “Lonely is the Night” is such an all-time FM radio jam, but it’s also the most blatant and stupid Led Zeppelin rip-off — both things can be true!
“Same Rules”
We’d just gotten off a tour with Fleshwater when we started writing and recording Who Loves the Sun. They have a song called “Be Your Best” that stood out to us in their set because of the laid-back, trip-hop nature of the song. All through the tour, Raygun kept challenging us to write a trip-hop song to see if we could do it, and this is what we came up with. The quiet instrumental part was entirely recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder by Luther Manhole, including the very distinct-sounding bassline.
“PEN I S MALL”
The first and most likely last Chat Pile song to feature a nasty bong rip in the middle of it. This is probably the heaviest song of ours to date, and I love it because it sounds like it could be on The Great Southern Trendkill.
“Shrine”
Chat Pile’s most emo-sounding song to date? I’ve never been a big emo guy myself, but I do love this song. It wins the award for “Chat Pile Bassline with the Most Notes in It,” which up to this point has been an extremely easy award to win.
“Intruder”
The original demo for this song sounded like it could be a laid-back Pavement song or something (the working title being Slacker Rock), but once it made the rounds through the Chat Pile grinder, turned into the high-tension post-punk song it is today. This is without question the hardest song of ours to play and really stretches the boundaries of our meager technical abilities.
“Christabel ‘26”
I’m probably the only person who hears it, but I feel like this is the closest we’ll ever get to doing a Candlemass song. Wait, never mind, I’ve decided right now that we need to write a song that sounds way more like Candlemass. Look forward to that coming soon to whatever we do next.
“Influence”
We’ve been wanting to team up with our good friends in Nightosphere forever, and the opportunity presented itself when they just so happened to play a show in Oklahoma City during the recording of Who Loves the Sun. I had them crash at my place (which is where we record all Chat Pile releases), and while there, Claire and Britney did backing vocals on the hooks for this song and Intruder. The hair on my arms was standing on end the whole time as I heard their voices in the playback — it was an incredible moment! I have very fond memories of kicking the hacky sack around with them and the rest of the Chat Pile guys in between takes.
“Family Funeral”
We really wanted to have at least one nonlinear track on this album that would eschew the verse-chorus-verse structure that we’ve become pretty good at writing. As counterintuitive as it may seem, it’s so much harder to write a song that doesn’t have immediate pop appeal. As such, this was the song that took the longest to put together, with dozens of structural iterations being put together over months of back and forth. Raygun had a minor “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” reaction when we turned it over for vocals, but he stepped up to the challenge, and I think this might go toward the top of our favorite Chat Pile songs.
“October All the Time”
Most people don’t know this, but prior to his time in Chat Pile, Raygun had released dozens of lo-fi experimental indie singer-songwriter albums over the span of 20 years or so. This is actually an old song of his that seemed to work really well with the themes of the record and sonically put a bow on the tracklisting. Some people have been hearing a hint of optimism in the lyrics, but that couldn’t be further from reality.