Pile

Sunshine and Balance Beams, Pile’s ninth album, alchemizes metaphors with its title. The first: finding happiness in nature and oneself. Second: the woozy posture one must strike to stay afloat in commercial society. These concepts seem antithetical—“But they might actually be the same thing,” hints guitarist, songwriter and singer Rick Maguire. On its newest record, Pile weaves a Sisyphean fable concerned with labor and living. “The fulfillment I receive from pursuing art has been a guiding force for me,” says Maguire. “But it can be damaging when that pursuit teases capitalist expectations of where you might be able to go, and then doesn’t square with the reality that follows.” Pile presents this parable with jagged guitars, sputtering drum bombast, eerie synths and aqueous strings, with panoramic production and loud-quiet dynamism matching the emotionality of the band’s thunderous performances.

Pile formed in 2007 as Maguire’s solo outlet, soon joined by time-warping drummer Kris Kuss (in 2009) and fuzzed-yet-melodic bassist Matt Connery (in 2010), among other friends; with its explosively intricate take on heavy music, the band found devoted fans amid Boston’s bustling punk scene. Since then, Pile’s released eight acclaimed albums, each showcasing different facets of its members’ talents. Dripping, the post-hardcore 2012 breakthrough, encapsulated the frenetic power of epic basement gigs. 2017’s A Hairshirt of Purpose twisted Pile’s angularities for greater clarity, incorporating strings without losing menace. Connery’s temporary departure after this record brought respected engineer and peer Alex Molini in on bass; the electronic experimentalism of All Fiction (2023) deepened the production relationship between Maguire and Molini, proving the band’s exploratory commitment as lifelong. That doesn’t scratch Pile’s dozen other releases, including B-side compilations, outtake EPs, demo cassettes, and live reworkings. They’ve earned a reputation as workhorses, crafting thought-provoking riffs while maintaining a tour schedule of international headlining, festival slots, and support for legendary and likeminded artists like Jesus Lizard and Cursive.

Their accomplishments are numerous, but the bandmates’ lives extend outside the tour van. “I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning when it comes to the ego-trap of capitalism,” admits Maguire. “Money and recognition are helpful tools, but the pursuit of those things for their own sake is somebody else’s idea.” And so Sunshine and Balance Beams drew influence from rejecting expectations. “A lot of the story came through trying to enjoy my life—connecting with people and animals, experiencing the world through art, being in nature, cooking food, exercising, talking about ideas.” He joined a basketball league, relishing the physical exhaustion and camaraderie, connecting with his dad over game recaps. It helped him escape the headspace of “Rick from Pile”—a nickname-turned-solo moniker—and work on being Rick. Separating his personhood from his job let Maguire explore 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.

Some Sunshine songs grew over a long timeframe—“Carrion Song” and “Meanwhile Outside,” the ecstatic final tracks, were in progress nearly a decade—but most came together at home during the pandemic, an acoustic guitar or Rhodes accompanying ambient street noises Maguire heard from his apartment. The full band finessed the arrangements in practice, with Molini’s insights tying the song’s movements inventively, and a now-rejoined Connery squaring the quartet on second guitar. “An Opening,” Sunshine’s second track and first with vocals, illuminated the narrative arc, with its introductory line—“Beyond the trees that lean toward the sun, things will open up”—becoming “a compass for the story.“ Soon, each song “felt like a revelation”—including lead single “Born at Night.” To write it, Maguire inhabited “a dark place,” wrestling with the concept that there is no enlightenment, no end to suffering. With Kuss’ accelerating tom stagger and Connery’s rainlike, Neu!-indebted guitars, the track moves from resignedness to meditative nihilism, augmented by swelling strings—a sonic embodiment of light and shadow’s equilibrium.

Pile enlisted collaborator Miranda Serra as co-producer and engineer; Serra has toured as the band’s front-of-house mixer since 2018, though her primary background is recording (Kal Marks, Kira McSpice). “She intimately understands the music, and because it was her studio work that got my attention in the first place, it seemed like a natural choice,” explains Maguire. The group traveled to Pawtucket, RI for two weeks of initial tracking at Machines with Magnets, storied for it and owner Seth Manchester’s (Lightning Bolt, Mdou Moctar) tremendous drum sound. This trip overlapped with 2024’s election, magnifying the album’s politics—like on “Uneasy,” in which Kuss’ slapback percussion and Molini’s dialed-in synths give body to the anxiousness that follows losing control. Serra foregrounded goals of “articulation” and “coherence” in the session, ensuring the messages were captured evocatively.

Mostly ditching a click track, Pile favored freewheeling performances that would animate the storytelling; Kuss’ drumming, shifting from groove to sputter to freakout on a hair-trigger, paves sinuous roads in sound and pace. “Kris has a way of understanding the music I write in a way that no other musician has; the life he breathes into the songs is on full display,” remarks Maguire. “Deep Clay,” written about the nastiness of tying self-worth to productivity, is hallmarked by Kuss’ unstoppability, subtle beat changes corroding into cathartic chaos. As on the past few albums, Pile enlisted a string section, though this time the arrangements were co-composed by cellist Eden Rayz and Maguire himself, with guiding tips from Molini. They drew inspiration from cinema and opera scores by Chopin, Bernard Herrmann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, lending Sunshine a larger-than-life sound that intensified Pile’s immediate performance.

To match this expansiveness, Maguire varied his vocal approaches, with plainspoken recitations, falsetto lilting and low-register growls joining his throat-shredding wails. Manchester, who mixed the record, suggested an “ASMR-like clarity” with use of the revered U47 microphone; this upfront vocal character grounds “Bouncing in Blue,” a rejection of certainty in which sweetly-sung hooks are subsumed under pummeling distortion. Candace Clement, the guitarist-singer of erstwhile Western Mass rockers Bunny’s A Swine, added octaves and harmonies throughout, complementing her former tourmate Maguire’s leads. “Her pitch is something I envy,” notes Maguire. “It was restorative to work with a friend like that after knowing each other for fifteen years.” Sunshine also marks a first collaboration with some other old pals: Chicago-based Sooper Records. Though Pile’s previous records were self-released or through Exploding in Sound, teaming with Sooper felt natural; Maguire’s been a fan of the collective label since it was launched by Glenn Curran and two of Pile’s favorite artists. “Nnamdi and Sen Morimoto are musical powerhouses, so it appealed to me to be on their team,” he says. “I admire the ethos of the label: art-forward and politically-minded.”

During recording, one more friend came to visit: photographer Mark Lapriore, who offered to take behind-the-scenes shots. “I wanted the album art to be black and white photography, and for it to involve nature,” recalls Maguire. “Looking through Mark’s photography, the negative image of the trees and rock wall struck me. The other images also related to the story—the flood, the clearing, the different perspectives.” It was a culminating creative decision that gave Sunshine and Balance Beams its cover, and helped tie together the album’s motifs: finding a path in the darkness, accepting life for its contrasts and shading, and taking solace in art—especially when you get to make it with cherished friends.