It's that time of year again where the turn of the season urges you to reflect on how unrecognisable the world around you has become.
But just as it starts to sting, the cathartic rumble of noise rock rises up over the middle distance to hold your hand through it.
Enter: Chat Pile’s Who Love The Sun
The band’s third full length album juggles the weight of living in late stage capitalism; the exceeding authority of technology and apathy as a shared mantra. Who Love The Sun feels like it should be uttered with an air of sarcasm, much like the quip “another day in paradise.”
Lead singer, Raygun Busch, wields this sentiment most strikingly in the track PEN I S MALL. Based on graffiti in the maintenance tunnels of Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City, where Busch once worked, the song offers a sharp commentary on working class subordination and the indifference it takes to make a living.
Driven by the repetitive and rhythmic thudding of guitar and bass, the instrumentation resembles a churning machine, an image made clearer by the chorus repeating “Simon says”. This play on the bleakness of a children's game spotlights its intention to teach us to obey a disconnected authority.
Through the dread, Chat Pile’s Who Love The Sun carves us a semblance of solace, embedded in the sense that this feeling is shared. A collective pit in all of our chests. To be recognised, felt and then relieved. Even if it's only a little bit.
Words by Alisha Kanthasamy