Chicago indie-rock band Ratboys are coming back to St. Louis for a show at Central Stage on Sunday, March 12, with Holy Posers. This St. Louis stop will be Ratboys’ first show of 2023, as they make their way down to Austin to perform at South by Southwest.
Ratboys is no strangers to St. Louis, opening for Guster at the Pageant in December 2022 and co-headlining the Duck Room in 2021 with Wild Pink. Singer and guitarist Julia Steiner says St. Louis almost feels like a second home at this point, noting that they have many friends down this way, including Jason Cupp, who mixed their 2021 record, Happy Birthday, Ratboy.
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In the lead up to their first show of the year, Ratboys just released their first new music since 2021, titled “Black Earth, WI”, an experience Steiner says was exhilarating. “It’s kind of like introducing an old friend of yours to everyone you’ve ever met—at the same time,” Steiner says. “It’s a bit overwhelming, but extremely gratifying.”
The new track, which clocks in at nearly nine minutes, sees the band leaning more into collaborative, exploratory jams alongside Steiner’s lyrics, which were inspired by road-tripping around southern Wisconsin. Steiner notes that capturing a sense of collaboration was key to the band’s process on “Black Earth, WI.”
“I wrote the original seed in 2019, and then all through early 2022, when we ended up recording the version that we put out, we just jammed on it from time to time and it ended up becoming longer. We added more parts and settled into a nice, stretched-out arrangement.” Steiner says. “That general spirit of collaboration and fleshed-out, full-band sonic presentation is really important to us.”
For their show on Sunday, Steiner says that the band will be playing tracks from across their discography, as well as some new tracks that haven’t yet been released, but should be coming out later this year.
“I’m really, really proud of it,” Steiner says. “I think it’s the most realized and most personal thing that we’ve made so far. So it’s going to be good.”
Ratboys will be playing at Central Stage (3524 Washington) on Sunday, March 12, at 8 p.m. Tickets are available through MetroTix.
