04/02/2026
Neu im Programm! 🙌
RATBOYS
> When The Sun Explodes UK/EU Tour 2026 <
am 12.05.26 im Aalhaus
Despite its title, Ratboys’ new album Singin’ to an Empty Chair is not defined by what’s missing. Rather, it’s the beginning of an important dialogue with a close loved one vocalist Julia Steiner finds herself estranged from.
The music on the band’s sixth studio album – its first for New West Records – fills the space that person left behind with 11 songs showcasing Ratboys at the peak of their powers — twangy, effervescent, as confident as they’ve ever been, and perhaps more emotionally interrogative than ever before.
four-piece Chicago band followed up 2023’s highly acclaimed The Window by
reconvening with co-producer Chris Walla to begin tracking at a rural Wisconsin cabin
before taking the songs to Steve Albini’s famed Electrical Audio studios in Chicago and
later to Rosebud Studio in Evanston, Illinois. The results veer from bubbly power-pop on
“Anywhere” to irresistible post-country on “Penny in the Lake,” along with heart-piercing
ballads like “Just Want You to Know the Truth” and an exhilarating detour into the
extraterrestrial on “Light Night Mountains All That,” which Steiner dubs the band’s
mammoth “wormhole jam.”
Singin’ to an Empty Chair also marks the first Ratboys album written since Steiner began
therapy, which the singer/lyricist credits for the clarity found across the album’s
unflinching examinations of relationship and self. Fittingly, as the album begins by
extending a hand into the void, it concludes with a scene of serenity – all while weaving
candid honesty, humor, chaos, and whimsy along the way. “It’s not all doom and gloom,”
Steiner says. “The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for
whatever happens next.”
Tickets sind ab 05.02. hier erhältlich:
www.hamburgkonzerte.de
I
concerts
📸: Miles Kalchik (Slide 2)
