Spectreview: Ratboys – Printer’s Devil

Ratboys’ evolutionary third album is contemporary indie rock done extraordinary well and one of the year’s earliest must-listens

-FUCHSIA PINK-

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“Open up your life frozen
Dig where you lie
A frozen meadow
In the dead of the night”

Listening to Ratboys’ latest album is like wearing a pair of glasses for the first time, when fuzzy colors and solid shapes suddenly bloom in detail. The Chicago band’s third album takes their potent mixture of late-80s alt rock and folk and amplifies it amid heightened production values and compositional ambition. Though sonically it recalls how Great Grandpa deftly reinterpreted themselves last year, Printer’s Devil is less a complete sea change than a burst of well-earned confidence. Most songs here are among the band’s best material: the uplifting “My Hands Grow” glows with the soft light of Fleet Foxes’s early albums; “Alien With a Sleep Mask On” doesn’t waste any time in its surging pop-punk; “A Vision,” meanwhile, matches the stark beauty and surrealistic detailing of an Adrienne Lenker arrangement. A lot of the allure once again comes from the power of Julia Steiner’s voice, but it’s made even more irresistible thanks to some especially powerful performances and smart mixing. Her words wrap around the hard rock of “Look To” and the shifting dynamics of “I Go Out at Night” until they embody the songs completely. The momentum slows down ever so slightly by the end, but besides that there really isn’t a weak link in the entire thing, and the pacing is also altogether superb in how it counterbalances its ups with its downs. There’s no gimmicks in sight, just contemporary indie rock done extraordinarily well, and that makes it one of this year’s early must-listens and a record worth sinking into completely.

Highly recommended for new grass.