With their 2012 breakout Dripping, Pile cemented their status as one the loudest, most quietly influential DIY rock bands with riotous live shows and a discography that brawls with post-hardcore. In recent years, however, the Boston group has been plotting a reinvention. Following 2019’s Green and Gray, they released an experimental cassette tape forbidden from being uploaded online, a completely improvised record, and an LP’s worth of reimagined solo versions of their songs. By the time they regrouped as a trio to record All Fiction, Pile were happy to let their identity crisis take the wheel. Forget about the manic guitars or the thrashing momentum of their old songs. Now, Pile are all about minimalist experimentalism and John Carpenter-style synths—a haunting yet jarring twist that ends up exuding the same adventurous spirit of their best work.
Pile cut to the chase with “It Comes Closer.” It’s less than a bang than it is the smoke rising from the barrel of a gun. Piano chords plod quietly while vocalist Rick Maguire sings along to swells of violin and cello. The production has a degraded quality to it, like a demo tape recorded onto another, older tape. This uncharacteristic mood piece sets the scene for an album designed to keep listeners at arms’ length. Big choruses are jettisoned for ambling, uncertain passages. Strings and synths are at the forefront, where they hum with a delicate warmth. Guitar and bass are sparse, and they often sound as if they’re being played on the far side of an abandoned warehouse. The most obvious departure is Maguire’s vocals, which are pushed to the background. His forlorn singing and occasional yells are submerged beneath the music, creating the illusion that he’s buried beneath rubble; whether he’s fighting to crawl out from under it or lays there suffocating in acceptance is up to interpretation.
Pile have long conjured imagery straight out of a horror anthology: spiders crawling up someone’s ass, a ghost trapped inside a human stomach, the unshakeable urge to get dressed and light yourself on fire. For once, Pile lure goosebumps through the music alone. “Link Arms” segues from a three-note piano part straight out of a paranormal film to spiraling violins fit for Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s dystopian panic. On “Nude With a Suitcase,” Alex Molini uses a Rhodes piano and Omnichord to cast an ambient haze that turns downright eerie by the outro. Even when Pile return to traditional rock song structures, like the thundering “Loops” or “Poisons,” the crackling distortion and alarm-like synths build a type of musical claustrophobia. Despite the absence of a clear narrative, All Fiction creates a cinematic portrait of a narrator slowly accepting their sanity is brittle, which makes sense considering Pile drew influence from the tense yet uncluttered scores of There Will Be Blood and Watchmen.
If Pile’s previous albums trained your eyes to follow Maguire, then this one forces you to focus on his surroundings. Drummer Kris Kuss has long been the driving force behind the band’s tenacity. He’s unforgiving behind the drum kit, hitting with aggression but giving off the aura of a gentle giant. On “Gardening Hours,” he turns sporadic drum grooves into a cool, jazzy rhythm that later slows down. The way his anthemic fills turn into a towering beast on “Forgetting” without overpowering the strings brings to mind the astute style of Unwound’s Sara Lund. Even during the album’s interludes, his airy percussion earns the spotlight without trying.
In 2009, Pile released a stripped-back guitar blues album called Jerk Routine; it’s felt like an outlier in their catalog until now. All Fiction proposes that the trajectory of Pile’s discography is not a line, but a horseshoe. The new album is a similar collection of sparse, atmospheric songs, but it centers around drums and percussion. With Kuss taking the lead, the band settles into a new identity that functions better than expected considering they’ve spent the past 16 years refining what a modern-day rock band could be. Avoiding the clichés of a band ditching their guitars for synthesizers, Pile find a happy medium, approaching the album through inquisitive means and experimental methods to create a similarly intense, albeit quieter, record. You have to bristle and tug at it to get past the barbed wire around these recordings, but once you do, you’re immersed in a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rock.
