Sunshine and Balance Beams
SR062LPC2Pre-Order Item. Release Date Subject to Change.
Label: Sooper Records
Release Date: 15th August
9 albums in and Pile are becoming less and less rock's best kept secret. Visceral and heavy but full of heart, art rock and alternative rock but full of cathartic joy.
Sunshine and Balance Beams, Pile’s ninth album, is a Sisyphean parable concerned with labor and living. To write it, singer Rick Maguire inhabited “a dark place,” wrestling with the concept that there is no enlightenment, no end to suffering. Maguire explores workaholism, the myth of meritocracy, and acceptance of mortality—all through a devilish allegory of trudging through a shadowy forest towards the uncertain dream of a bright clearing.
Pile wrestles with existential and social contradictions by evoking sonic in-betweens. The music exists somewhere in the temporary equilibrium of light and shadow, chaos and order. Heated rain-like guitars, shifting drums that pave sinuous roads in sound and pace, eerie synths, and aqueous strings add to a panoramic production of loud-quiet dynamism matching the emotionality of the band’s thunderous performances.
The group also favored freewheeling performances that would animate the storytelling, while enlisting a string section (violins, viola, cello) to perform incandescent, through-composed arrangements co-written by cellist Eden Rayz and Pile. They drew inspiration from cinema and opera scores by Chopin, Bernard Herrmann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, lending Sunshine a larger-than-life sound that intensifies Pile’s blistering realizations of some of their most accessible songwriting to date.
The recording is a noticeable leap in production value, and centers Maguire’s vocals in new and exciting ways. Pile traveled to Pawtucket, RI for two weeks of tracking at Machines with Magnets with longtime engineer Miranda Serra (Kal Marks, Kira McSpice). The album was mixed by Seth Manchester (Lightning Bolt, Mdou Moctar), and Mastered by Matt Colton (Aphex Twin, Swans, Muse). Sunshine and Balance Beams is Pile’s first album for Chicago’s Sooper Records.
“they’ve spent the past 16 years refining what a modern-day rock band could be… a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rock”
PITCHFORK
Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Balance Beams (vinyl exclusive)
2. An Opening
3. Deep Clay
4. A Loosened Knot
5. Bouncing in Blue
6. Uneasy
Side B
7. Holds
8. Born at Night
9. Meanwhile Outside
10. Carrion Song