Maguire keeps coming back to the word “trajectory”, and I get the sense that Pile’s sound is as much a moving target for him as it is for those who attempt to define it. There’s honesty and open-mindedness to his genre agnosticism, like an admission that he doesn’t exactly know where it’s all going, but that he’s as open to wrestling with expectations as he is to staying the course. Case in point: even You’re Better Than This, the foursome’s most recent album, slipped an interlude of delicate fingerpicking (titled “Fuck the Police”, dodging the conceptual bullet of an all-out pretty Pile song) into a barrage of relentless quasi-punk tracks that rattle like a series of rhythmic kicks to the gut. Maybe it’s there because it’s a beautiful song. Maybe it’s there to fuck with us. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

But Maguire’s passion makes clear that nothing makes the cut for the record based on external influences. His writing process is too unforgiving and architecturally keen to allow a track to take up album space for any reason beyond its own creative merit. In You’re Better Than This’s hidden final track, an industry-type voice-over even mocks the role of outside forces on the creative process: “Rock and roll forever with the customer in mind, take one.” What follows is the kind of deliciously self-indulgent shredding that the band had consciously avoided over the entire claustrophobic album. It feels like a dam breaking. Still, it’s there because it’s a natural release for the anxiety-ridden album, not because everyone loves a good solo.

“You try and make as much of a conscious decision as you can about what the songs are going to be and what function they serve, but it’s never going to come out exactly how you plan it. Maybe it’s just with every record, [like] with both Dripping and You’re Better Than This this, just hating everything that you’re writing and then just sort of fighting through it and then it’s like, well, it’s done.” He chuckles in a way that isn’t entirely humorous. “And I don’t want it to be that way. I don’t want that to be the process, but it just happens sometimes. Usually when I relax it ends up getting finished and it’s like ‘it works, it’s done’. And I don’t mean ‘works’. It’s not, like, exceptional. It’s not going to change the world. But it’s a song. It’s something.”

Though Pile’s amassed enough devoted fans to regularly sell out venues and even crowdfund a new tour van last fall, all the outside support in the world still makes a shaky match for a harsh inner critic. Maguire’s open about the way that artistic frustration can spill beyond his creative life when the writing isn’t fulfilling. “Usually there’s some self-destructive behavior involved. But I don’t know, it comes to pass. I kind of go extreme either way, either taking care of myself and trying to be creative and work on some really good stuff, or it’s like, I hate this, and it falls apart and I go through a period of not being that healthy. It’s not a problem, it’s not something that really requires pity from anyone else, it’s just sort of something that I’ve got to fuck with back and forth until I can figure out which way is up and what works.”

But when something works by his own standards, it really works for the band’s fans. Cue the lyrical hyperanalysis. I ask Maguire if he intentionally writes to allow for the level of deconstruction of that “Special Snowflakes” essay, which he’s familiar with. He gives me a flat “no”, but later mentions that it might be the song that he’s proudest of, lyrically speaking. He admits that it’s “pretty lofty stuff, that, while I know illustrates a point for me is really dodging the subject.” The meaning is in there, but he’s not necessarily looking for anyone else to find it.  Though he won’t elaborate further, he confirms that the song itself is about ego-weariness, the product of the same attention that the track’s own scrutiny fuels. He feels privileged for the band’s current position, but he also acknowledges that the music “becomes its own thing to other people”, and that he gets caught in his own head about what that means.

So if it’s not exactly about communicating something specific through the lyrics, does that mean it’s about the catharsis? The two lines of thinking aren’t completely contradictory, but one suggests mulling it over while the other insists there’s not as much there to “get”. I finally just ask Maguire what he thinks of both angles, and he pauses before flipping it all back on the listeners. “Whatever anybody gets out of it. If they want to write a long essay about it, that’s something they want to get out themselves. You know what I mean? If I can help facilitate it, cool. If they want to just feel something stronger than they felt before and I can be a catalyst for that, that’s amazing too. So I’m grateful for anybody paying attention at all, I can’t say that I’m in one camp more than the other.”

The band has already started working on its next album, and it’s as arduous a process as ever. True to his approach toward past releases, Maguire’s willing to reconsider everything about his writing style, including the visceral metaphors that have become his work’s signature. “I’ve done a decent amount of that. It would be nice to be a little bit more direct about shit. I don’t really know how to do that, so it’s sort of shifting gears for me.” He pauses to think about it. The trajectory continues.

Pile’s Great Scott residency kicks off tonight, 12/3, with openers Gracie, State Champion, and Rye Pines, with additional dates on 12/10 featuring Battle House, Half Sour, and La Noia, and 12/17 featuring Ancient Filth, Aneurysm, and Clowder.