Shouting at the Void: Pile

Jesse Paller

I discovered Pile at CMJ and became a rabid fan in the space of a week or two. On Thursday night they played at an odd Ethiopian bar in D.C. and my roommate and I naturally followed. Something about this band causes me to ring with a resonant frequency; like a glass when the right note is hit, I shatter.

The Boston-based fourpiece began as an outlet for singer/guitarist Rick Maguire, who described his music as an “obsession‰” when we met him before the set. Their newest album, Dripping, released on October 23, is built of jaw-dropping songwriting feats- ten complete opuses that start, build, and finish in the strongest and most perfect iteration possible, all with standout moments that cause heart palpitations. The first time I played the album I loved one song. The second time I loved three. It didn‰’t take long for it to become my religion.

Everybody who hears them seems to say that Pile sounds like the ‰90s. This is probably because of their guitar-centric approach, a sound halfway between the sprawling guitar indie-epics of Modest Mouse or Built to Spill and grunge. And not “grunge‰” the cliche, but grunge the raw feeling of bursting bleeding from previous standards of music. The change in the air, the cry into a decade of beautiful ugliness.

Pile performed as well as anyone I‰’ve ever seen. Their dynamics were breathtaking – an instant took them from quiet, almost pastoral sections of virtuosic fingerpicking to full glory. Bassist Matt Connery stood with his back to the crowd as he found his groove in even the windiest of time signature storms. Guitarist Matt Becker‰’s wrists could hardly be seen as he shredded out chords. The two guitars combined were a force of nature – either a misty shower or a tsunami, depending on the minute.

The awe-inspiring talent of the giant Kris Kuss places him in my eyes in the pantheon of rock drumming gods. His demeanor while drumming was reminiscent of Led Zeppelin‰’s John Bonham, biting the air viciously while pounding out impossible fills. He flailed this way and that with massive arms that made his drumsticks look like toothpicks. In fact he seemed nearly trapped behind his kit, and if he played it much longer it probably would have been smashed to pieces.

As for Rick, when we chatted beforehand, he was calm as he dragged on his self-rolled cigarette, friendly and down to earth. The change that came over him when the music began was unfathomable. First a calm in the quiet beginning, then a guitar frenzy; verses delivered in a unique, heart-wrenching nasally timbre, and then a shrieking, sweating, neck-straining chorus. But whether singing quietly, loudly, or screaming, he never once lost grip of his strangely beautiful melodies. As his vocals stumbled with trickily choreographed perfection through the ever-changing landscape, they grew constantly in complexity, in power and in pathos.

The set list was short but fantastic. During “Bubblegum,‰” from Dripping, gauzy sheets of clean guitar suddenly parted for the line “I was the one who stepped on her face/such beautiful skin as I clawed it away‰” and hard-driving, descending chords. “Came As A Glow‰” from 2010‰’s Magic Isn‰’t Real rocked with a swampy groove and the same album‰’s “Two Snakes‰” was kicked through its pulverizing swagger with chunky triplets and gunshot flams from Kris.

“The Jones,‰” the final track on the new album, was played by request and was emotionally wrecking. Beginning folk-like with a defeated line “trying to keep up by running in place,‰” and building into a catchy chorus of “oohs,‰” the song quickly ignited with frantic guitar and lyrics describing a fantasy of looting a neighbor‰’s home. The chorus‰ÛÓ “the Jones, the Jones, THEY GOT BIGGER BONES‰Û‰ÛÓ was life-affirming. And after all the fire and turmoil, the song dropped out and the sad first line reappeared, and the “oohs‰” sounded mournful rather than anticipatory and the song ended abruptly and I was shocked that only four minutes had gone by.

They asked what their last song should be. I yelled for “Prom Song.‰” I pleaded for “Prom Song.‰” So they played it, and it sounded like something intangible- something that only the best music possesses. Its lonely, barren guitar and end-of-the-world chord progression sounded like they mattered. It didn‰’t sound like a genre exercise‰ÛÓ it sounded like something was really at stake. It sounded immortal. The song lumbered towards its apotheosis and Rick let loose a piercing solo torn from a thundercloud, shivering and screaming over a rhythm section of pure power before jumping back in to deliver the song‰’s crushing final chords.

I guess the thing I love so much about Pile is the breath that they take away from me. In Dripping I have found an album that is at par with my favorites, taking from them but with enough of its own twisted genius to stand apart. This band will make me cry in ten years. I‰’m lucky to have seen them twice already. No matter how many more times I see them (hopefully hundreds), I will always be astonished at how such a casual, mild-mannered group of guys can transform into a near-divine force for thirty minutes. I urge everybody reading this to find a way to see them. Rapture rarely comes this cheap anymore.

By Jesse Paller