Photo by Elizabeth Fuchsia
Where have you gone, Rick from Pile? A city turns its lonely eyes to you.
The answer, it turns out, is Nashville. After years of living in and around Boston, Rick Maguire has decamped to the south and, ipso facto, so has Pile. How could the heroes of post-punk abandon us for the land of honky-tonk?
There was no drama surrounding the move. Logistical reasons were at the heart of the matter. Maguire’s parents live there and he wanted to see them more. New full-time bandmates Chappy Hull and Alex Molini also live in Nashville. It made sense. And so Boston’s elder statesman pulled up stakes and took his band down south.
Despite the upheaval, Maguire sounds strangely at ease on the recently-released Green and Grey. The opening lines on the album find him contemplating and finding solace in growing older. “No longer burdened by youth / Not burning and raw like a wound,” Maguire sings. Compare that to 2012’s “Prom Song,” a song dripping with anxiety about one’s place in the world and you’ve got a very different outlook on life.
Don’t think that the lyrics are all straightforward ruminations, however. Maguire’s trademark enigmatic style is still in full employ. Even when a song seems to make perfect sense, you never know when his tongue is actually in his cheek, or if he’s simply singing about a character he dreamt up. Part of the beauty of being a Pile fan is submerging yourself in the worlds Maguire builds with his words, and then marveling at the sonic landscape the band surrounds those worlds with.
There’s always been a push and pull that elevates Pile’s music. Green and Grey highlights everything that makes the band great, and finds them balancing all their many talents. Sometimes Maguire’s searching lyrics are propelled forward by a pounding, thrusting rhythm section, like on opener “Firewood.”
Other times, such as on album stand out “Hair,” the band lays down an elegiac sound that infuses Maguire’s tender singing with darker undertones. On songs like “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller” all bets are off and Pile unleash their hardcore bonafides on a worthy punching bag.
“A Labyrinth with No Center” blends all of these sides into one four-and-a-half minute track. Maguire’s voice and the melody build to a crescendo only to fall into a savage breakdown that leads yet again to another cycle of buildup and release.
Maguire is a (no longer) local treasure who is coming home to play at Great Scott the night before his band’s set at Boston Calling, because he couldn’t imagine making his return on a big stage in the middle of the field; it had to be somewhere loud, cramped, and familiar. We caught up with him by telephone to chat about finding contentment, making art full-time, his feelings on coming home, and a whole lot more, check it out.
Allston Pudding: What’s your gut reaction to this: Pile has been active for around 12 years and released 7 full-length albums?
Rick Maguire: I guess I’ve had some time to process that. Because I’ve lived through it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a thing. I mean I’m proud of it, I’m glad I’m still doing it, and it seems to keep getting a little bit of a more in-depth operation with each go at it.
AP: What do you mean by “in-depth?”
RM: Right now we’re doing all the planning for tour; we’re shipping boxes to different cities where we know people so we’ll be fully stocked and don’t have to convince our friends to ship records to different places.
I guess as far as the general operations goes, I feel like it’s gotten a little more streamlined. That feels good to feel like you’re making strides or progress in that regard; just to feel like you’re getting better at something the more you do it.
I think musically too we get a little more comfortable exploring different things and trying different stuff out.
AP: What were you trying to explore on this new album then?
RM: Primarily it was just getting used to playing with different people, or writing with different people. Also in the way that we were not practicing just once or twice a week. This time around we would set aside two weeks and get together and practice 8 hours a day; more or less treat it like a job. It was much more concentrated in that way.
I also feel like from album to album I’m consistently trying some different ideas—I know they end up under the same umbrella more or less of loud guitars, singing, and yelling or screaming and all that [Laughs].
AP: It’s interesting to hear you talk about how this was a new process with new members, because going through the lyrics it sounds kind of like you’re content with your place in life. Like lyrics from “Firewood” being “no longer burdened by youth,” or on “Lord of Calendars” you talk about how you’re on this one path and seem happy with that. Is that a fair statement to make?
RM: I am. I am content with that stuff. And those songs are a little bit of sarcasm too. I’m still grappling with it when I’m writing the song, trying to figure out how to convey a thing. In general, I’m a pretty content person. I think putting any of the tension I feel about those things…putting them into songs make it so that actually doing day-to-day stuff is easier. It just makes things make a little more sense, I guess.
AP: Have you trained yourself to be content with the entire process overall, or does that come naturally to you?
RM: I’d say that I’ve probably bent my perception to be happy with it, but I am. So I can’t really tell how much of it I’m automatically or naturally ok with, and how much of it I’ve just convinced myself, ‘I like this!’ I’d say it’s tough to tell where the line is that divides the two.
Overall I like the shift from thing to thing. Right now it’s getting ready for this tour, making sure we’re prepared in all sorts of ways, doing all the logistics, doing tour books. Prior to that it was a bunch of emailing making sure everything is where it’s supposed to be for the album to be released. Before that it was being in the studio and making sure everything sounds the way it should. Before that it was trying to catalogue these ideas and look around and find creativity wherever you can gather it. I like that it shifts from thing to thing. It’s almost like seasonal work that’s year round.
AP: If you were to go back to your younger self and tell him you’d be excited about the logistics and everything that goes on outside of the music, how do you think you would’ve reacted?
RM: I mean, how much younger?
AP: Say when you were first starting out, twenty-ish.
RM: I think I kind of knew that’s what the deal was going to be. When I was twenty and doing it I still had the idea of ‘ok I’m going to do all this stuff.’ I wasn’t really sure what it was going to look like 10-12 years from then, but I don’t know if I would’ve been surprised. I think I would be excited to see where it is now. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was still the one trying to find artists to design shirts, putting in orders, making sure all the tour advances—actually I didn’t know what tour advances were then. I don’t think I would’ve been surprised.
I have an inclination towards wanting to do work, especially if it’s something I’m invested in. It can be a good break from the writing part. Doing any one thing for too long, even if I were just writing all the time, which is obviously my favorite part of doing it, but if I were doing that I think it would maybe drive me crazy because it’s putting all this pressure on this singular thing.
Again, this might be me bending my perception to fit where I am at right now to be happy and content with things. But I think it maybe makes me more well-rounded to jump to this other thing and be like, ‘Okay, here are the mechanics of this thing.’ It takes the emotion out of this thing that I’ve poured a lot of emotion into. There’s no way I can ever look at it objectively, but maybe I’m a little closer to doing that by performing these other tasks that are involved with it that are cold and emotionless.
AP: You do this full-time now right? How has it been that this is your full-time job?
A: I’ve had some time to adjust to that and I’m happy to keep working on it. I feel like there have been certain things that have been neglected in the past that I’m able to give more attention to, which is nice. I feel pretty good about continuing to go forward with it and figure out how to do things better. Time and attention are limited resources and the fact that I’m able to devote all of mine currently to this is nice.
Who knows how I’ll feel about it at the end of the tour. That’s kind of the nice thing, too. Right now I can sort of feel myself accelerating in terms of productivity by any conventional, capitalist standard. But at the end of all that I’ll just be able to do nothing and read [Laughs]. Doing nothing is very productive in its own way for my mental health and the writing part. As i’ve heard people say ‘just checking in with myself,’ to see where everything is at. Another one of the seasonal sort of things. Right now we have to work. It’s been awesome, everyone in the band is down here and we’ve been doing different tasks to make sure that the whole machine is going to be running in a few days. We’ll do all that and then have some time to chill.
AP: How are you feeling about coming back to Boston for the intimate Great Scott After Party and then the bigger show on the following day at Boston Calling?
RM: I feel good about it. I’m excited to play Great Scott again. We got asked to do the Boston Calling thing, and that would’ve been our first time back since I moved back to Nashville. I was like, we can’t just go back and play that one giant thing. I’m glad we were able to work something out with Great Scott. I’m excited to spend the weekend back there.
AP: You think you’ll feel any different playing these shows with the fact that you’ve moved out?
RM: Maybe. It’s tough to tell at this point. I’m sure I’ll be a little bit nostalgic being up there. I’m really looking forward to it, though.
Pile makes their triumphant return to Boston for a sold-out show at Great Scott on 5/24. They play Boston Calling the next day, Saturday 5/25. Get tickets to Boston Calling here.