Pile on Optimism, Strangers, and the Arc of 2010s Indie Rock

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

I'd say that Pile have become one of the most fascinating bands in the American rock underground over the past decade. Their sound keeps shifting in new and unexpected ways, and their latest record—Sunshine and Balance Beams, which just dropped on new label home Sooper—finds the Boston-borne group further tweaking the out-there experimentalism of 2023's All Fiction in very appealing fashion. I hopped on a call with Rick Maguire recently to talk about all things Pile and how his own perspective and ethos has shaped the band's overall lifespan and survival, and he provided fresh insight on a slew of topics that, if you're a regular reader of this newsletter, you've seen me approach with others over the years. Check it out:

Pile's discography has taken a really interesting path. Talk to me about how this new record came together.
It was a linear thing for the band up until the pandemic, when I had to think, "Well, if I can't meet up with the band, what am I going to do?" That also seemed like an opportunity to go pretty far out with stuff that I'd wanted to do for a long time with the last record—and then we became a three-piece, so that was a whole thing. I was able to learn about production a little bit more and try different things out that weren't guitars.

With this record, we have a more solid lineup now. We're a four-piece again, and we're all mostly in the same region, so we can practice once or twice a week. So it became a little bit like it used to be, but with the knowledge of incorporating other instruments and production techniques. It does feel like a mix of what we've done in the past and things that feel exciting and new to me.

When it came to experimenting with the last record, what were some of the hurdles that you ran up against?
It was really exciting trying new stuff out, but I had the self-awareness of what Pile was to a lot of people, which was a rock band. I just got really tired of doing that, so going into all the synth stuff really just opened things up.

Performing all of it live was rewarding, even though it was challenging. So much went into the sampling, and it made me realize how freeing it was to be a rock band where it was just my guitar and I could move around on stage and be much more in the performance. Whereas with this more recent material, there was always a program to change, a thing to trigger—and it all needed to be perfectly on time. There were very few moments where we could let loose—and even still, with a lot of the places we were playing, I couldn't move too far or freely from my station, which had a synth and a MIDI foot controller. It definitely made it more challenging to live in the music, because if I missed something, it would mess things up for everybody.

You mentioned the sound of these like these last couple records coming forth from pandemic necessity. How was the pandemic for you?
It was mostly okay. I was newly in a relationship at the time, actually. I was going to visit my partner at the beginning of March, and we ended up living in the same bedroom for however long it was—and we're married now, so it worked out. That part of it was great.

Something that I still struggle with now that things are are open again is that I feel a pressure to constantly keep putting things out. The pandemic was a forced stop for me, and I was able to explore things creatively a little bit more. I was getting a check in the mail, and I could experiment with different instruments and demoing in different ways.

I'm extremely grateful that we have such a supportive fan base. During that time—and I don't think it was exclusive just to us—but a lot of people were supporting the artists that they cared about. I look at those couple of years, and people really shelled out a bunch of money for stuff that I was doing. I made a cassette tape that was essentially demos for All Fiction, and I made a zine with it. I was going through our Bandcamp all-time history, and that was one of our biggest-selling things.

It's crazy to have a cassette tape that people were buying just on the faith that it'd be something that they'd like. It reminds me of when I used to go a CD store and just buy something and be like, "I think that this might be cool." In that way, it connected me to how supportive people can be of music, especially on the other side of people just streaming music. It seems like it's easy to come to the conclusion that people don't really care about music as much, because it's just so easily accessible. Obviously, as far as the pandemic goes, there were a lot of other challenges that went along with it. But as it related to Pile, we managed.

You're right, though—there was this period of time during the pandemic where artists received a lot of support in the ways you mentioned. I'm curious to hear if that was something that's sustained as the decade has dragged on.
It's been interesting, because I try to keep pretty good numbers of tours through the years. What it seems is that it's balanced out. I mean, it's definitely calmed down since the pandemic, but we've also been able to tour, so that has managed to stay even. I've also looked at merch sales on the road, and it's odd because the rooms that we've been playing and the attendance has been roughly the same from 2019 onwards.

But I'm also hearing a lot of people being like, "I've seen this band five times now." I'd imagine that there's some people that have seen us a bunch of times and keep coming out, and I'd also imagine there's a bunch of people who I've seen us a few times and are like, "I think I'll pass this time." Then there are some people who have never heard of us before. So it feels like there's this weird revolving door, and the same goes with merch. There are people who are like, "I have five Pile shirts."

I think it remains pretty steady, and it's kind of perplexing as to how that is the case. Again, there are some people that are just down to support us. They understand—this is my belief, anyways—that, "Yeah, this is my fifth Pile shirt, I might not wear it all the time, but this is the fuel that keeps the machine running." So that's been cool.

What is your personal relationship with touring like these days?
Personally, I enjoy it. I obviously get tired, but it's my connection to the work itself and the creative output. Part of it feels pretty nourishing in a specific way. I get to connect with people with this music. I started making music without there being any expectation that people would connect with it, and the fact that now people do...I'm able to go outside and be able to to talk to people that I wouldn't otherwise. To see that people are connecting with something that I've worked hard on is very fulfilling.

Economically, it's kind of the same animal, but there's some people in the band who are like, "I'm tired of this. I love playing music in front of people, but it pulls me away from being at home and connecting with the community that I have there." It really varies. And it's always exhausting, that's for sure. It's exhausting for me, even though I do generally like it—that kind of exhaustion does fuel the creative aspect. I get to listen to demos and jot down ideas. I have time to journal, and I'm just sitting in a van.

I could probably make it from my bed to making, brewing, an drinking an entire cup of coffee with a blindfold on, just because I know my personal space so well.
But being on the road, you're constantly stimulated by waking up in a new place, so you have to think about things that you don't ordinarily have to think about.
While that's fatiguing, it also forces you to think in a different framework, and I like.

Do you do music full-time at this point?
I do. Back in 2015 is when I was able to figure it out. I worked at Trader Joe's prior to that for six years. That's actually where I met Chris, the drummer. Then I booked a nine-week tour throughout the United States, took 10 days off, did a few more shows in New England and up in Canada, and a few days after that we went to Europe for a month. After this crazy tour schedule, it was like, "Well, what I'm gonna do is quit my job, get rid of most of my things, be on tour for eight months, and live in the practice space. I'll get a gym membership so I can take showers there."

I just kind of floated. I lived there, which was cool for that time. I had just turned 30, and I really felt like I was getting away with something by having such a low overhead. It got pretty gritty, pretty quick—but from there, I was able to sort things out and not stay in any place for longer than six months. For the first five years from there, I started to get my footing, and then I moved down to Nashville. I was like, "If I could just get rid of this pesky rent situation, then I'd be able to sort it out," and so I was able to build up from from there. But it definitely was a slow process of getting comfortable and paring down on creature comforts.

I've come to think of Pile as a band that's doing its own thing separate from most of indie rock, and now you're putting records out on Sooper, which is a label I'd describe similarly. Talk to me about teaming up with them.
After the last record, it became clear that it was time for us to see what else was out there. We loved working with [Exploding in Sound co-founder Dan Goldin] and Exploding in Sound and are still very close with him, but we've put out so many records together.

I'd known [Sooper co-founder Glennon Doyle] for years, before he'd started Sooper. We had a conversation in Chicago once. We were in the same scene, and he's a lawyer, and because I was floating around from apartment to apartment, I was curious about some tenants' rights stuff. We chatted about some things and got to know each other through that, and then shortly after he was like, "I'm starting this label. I know you're working with Exploding in Sound, but if you're ever looking to do a one-off or do something different, keep us in mind."

That was in 2017, and in 2024 we started talking about things, and it seemed like it would be a good fit. I love the label, I love what they do, and I love NNAMDI and Sen Morimoto. So it seemed like a cool thing to to try, and they seemed hungry—and so are we. Working with them has been really great.

I'm curious to hear you reflect on the general arc of indie rock as you've witnessed it over the last 15 years. The term indie has obviously become a little meaningless. In the U.S., it feels even closer to how it's always been used in the UK, which is as a marketing designator signifying the sound of something, rather than like a true ethos. There also seems to be some desire to return to how things used to be as well.
Indie is just the catch-all genre for somewhere between mainstream and oddball rock music. As far as indie as the idea of artist independence, starting as a solo project and being like, "I'm just gonna make some stuff and try to play as many shows as I can," and then meeting the folks from Exploding In Sound and it being a very clear scene, that part of it—I would say from 2010 to 2015—was a group of bands that were all inspired by each other.

That also seems, historically, how these things have gotten some traction. There's a handful of bands that all know and like each other and go on tour with each other, but they mostly have their own identity. A lot of the time, on Exploding in Sound, these artists would end up going to bigger labels, and that next level is where the term indie as a marketing thing comes into play. Once they reach that level of, "Now we've gotten enough traction in our own community, we're going to go to this next place"—back in the day, it would be referred to as selling out, but it's a different landscape for that sort of thing. What artists have done for a long time is trying to reach a wider audience.

From 2010 to 2015, my experience was that we were in a place where we went out and did our own thing. We still stayed loyal to the label that we were on, we technically still were a part of that scene, but people knew our band and we were fortunate enough to build a following based on that. As far as how scenes have existed beyond that, I've still mostly been in the Boston area and, for a short period of time, Nashville. There were scenes that would arise, but I don't know if it's the same. Once I started focusing so much on my band and how to tour, I became less involved with the local scene. I can't tell if that's the reason that I don't see them as much—just because I haven't been there to see them. If it's changed, the environment has changed, so I have to acknowledge that my perspective limits what I'm aware of.

I'm also kind of curious as to how you feel it's turning back to what it used to be. Is that in reference to people getting off of streaming? For a variety of reasons, people do seem to be like, "I just want to get off my phone." I see a cultural movement away from people being on social media and relying on streaming. I'm sure there will always be people that are passive music listeners—the same people that are like, "I like what's on the radio" are like, "We'll just put on some AI playlist on Spotify," and that'll be totally enough for them. But as far as people who care about music and art as a cultural thing, they might continue to move away from that.

What you mentioned with regards to that feeling in the early-to-mid-2010s, where there was a real sense of motion, for better or worse—maybe people weren't making money off of their success, but success seemed a lot more visible. You could see artists and bands having this overnight sensation-type thing in indie rock. Around 2016 or 2017, you started to see that wane. Somebody over at Secretly said to me for a piece i did last year that, at this point, either you're Phoebe Bridgers or you can't pay rent—and I feel like that kind of says it all. 10%, maybe even just 1%, honestly, are finding an amount of success to the point where you can't even call what they do "indie" anymore—and the rest of people I speak to are extremely demoralized or defeated to the point where they're like, "Should we just go back to how this was being done in the early-to-mid-2000s, or the '90s, or even the '80s?" You turned 40 this year, yes?
Yeah.

I feel like our age group, in any industry that is remotely creative, is grappling with the fallout of the notion that you can follow the rules, have this upward ascent, do what you love, and be successful—that you can achieve material success. That doesn't really seem to be the case, and I feel like a lot of people our age are dealing with the fallout of that disappointment. And just as many people are like, "Okay, success will be on my own terms now," and when I talk to people who think that way, I'm like, "Okay, now we're kind of getting back to the beginning of things again, where you're making music to make music, and if you get an audience and make a career out of it, that's kind of a bonus."
Something that I'm learning about myself is that I might be a bit of a covert optimist. In 2010, we released Magic Isn't Real, which was the record where the the band started to be known as the band. Before that, it was just me doing my solo thing. That was also the time that Bandcamp was such a popular tool, and our record was "Pay What You Want," which was a huge piece for us. We were touring like crazy, and we had this record that I thought was pretty good, and there were enough people connecting with it enough to be like, "Oh, this is a cool band."

Obviously, Bandcamp has gone the way that it's gone. It's still there, in some ways, but people are definitely side-eyeing it because of some of the decisions that they've made. I think that there's a growing awareness of the pitfalls of capitalism and the importance of music as culture—both because of the current pitfalls of capitalism and the current political situation. It was just so obviously in our face for the past five years, and now AI is coming in and people are like, "These things can make music, but it does feel important that it's people connecting with each other and that music and art is a language for us to make sense of our own experience."

I think that there'll be other things like people moving away from Spotify. I've heard about this alternative to Bandcamp called Subvert that I don't know too much about—but people come up with these alternatives to platforms and it's difficult for them to get traction. But—and this could just be because I'm on tour and seeing people be excited about music and talking to folks in that capacity every night—I think the music industry is always changing. The same way that it splintered off from things like radio to different physical formats, people are going to have their subscriptions to things like NTS, and they're going to have their streaming platforms for stuff where it's like, "I just want to hear this record," but they're also going to have their Bandcamp thing where they can pay for it and find smaller artists. That's my hope, anyways—that it becomes a little more complex and nuanced, and that as a music consumer people understand what they're signing up for instead of just being like, "This is the path of least resistance. I'll subscribe to this."

You were saying how we've kind of existed outside of what you think of regarding indie music, and I think part of that is because of that Bandcamp "Pay What You Want" thing. I was looking at a laminated pricing sheet for our records and t-shirts and stuff from 10 years ago, and we were selling stuff for lhalf of what we're selling it for now. We were doing a lot of that stuff independently—nobody was dipping into that, and making it affordable for whoever is buying it is also a pretty sweet deal.

I think it just comes down to if you're willing to try to connect with people instead of—and I've been guilty of this as well—being like, "I just want a shortcut because this work is hard" If I could just get a leg up on this, I still want that, of course. I want to have a little bit more financial security. That's what the low-overhead thing taught me. If I can make it work with less, then I'll do that, because I enjoy making it work.

Something you said that's really interesting to me is your optimism being influenced by the fact that you're on tour right now, interacting with people. The "interacting with people" thing is kind of underrated at this point! During COVID, we were all just online looking at our phones all the time. But when you actually leave the house and talk to normal-ass people, they don't have as much of a doomer mentality on things and also seem genuinely jazzed to be supporting artists, going to shows, and having a good time. That's really hard to forget in the digital echo chamber. I think things are bad across the board, but as long as you keep being around other people, there's a little bit of hope in that.
I absolutely agree. A thread that we've had for a long time as a band—and it's evolved, but it's still been there—is that we'll stay at people's houses when we tour. A lot of times, it's people that we've known for years and years. On this past trip, there were some places where people either they got kids or whatever and they can't house six people, so I've reached out in our newsletter being like, "Hey, can anyone put us up?" And it'll be someone who we've never met before. It happened three times on the last tour, and it was great. We were walking into a situation like, "Hopefully, this isn't weird," as people just feeling each other out. There's no guarantee, of course, that it's going to go that way, but it does go the way of, "Oh man, now I feel like we've made new friends because we put ourselves in this weird situation." You have a great time, you play board games or whatever, and then you go off to the next city—and I take that with me. There are so many strangers out there that are just lovely people.