"No Empty Chairs Here" - Ratboys, live at The Garage, London (May 2026)

So what's it gonna take to open up tonight?

An album built around imagined conversations and calcified emotional pain found its answer in a full room of fans in north London. And everything was as good as advertised.

There were no empty chairs here, partly because The Garage was standing-room only, but also because Ratboys are very much on the rise.

Ratboys PERFORMING at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

The American alt-country indie rockers brought their ‘When The Sun Explodes’ tour across the pond in support of their latest album, 2026’s Singin’ To An Empty Chair. After a few dates in Europe and a show in Southampton, London was calling.

The band arrived at The Garage as part of Footsteps Festival, filling the 600-cap independent venue with fuzzy guitars and their trademark therapeutic twang.

Now in its second year and taking place across the second May Bank Holiday weekend, Footsteps Festival is a five-day celebration of music, art, community, independent venues, and the grassroots scenes that keep London’s gig-going ecosystem alive. With shows spread across venues including Moth Club, Islington Assembly Hall, and EartH Theatre, Ratboys’ Thursday night stop felt like a fitting midpoint: an American indie band with deep road mileage landing in a room built for believers, latecomers, and curious converts alike.

The evening’s support acts offered two very different routes into the headliners’ world.

Glasgow’s Former Champ were the closer stylistic cousins: jangly, melodic, catchy, with enough grit and Scottish guitar-pop sparkle to make them feel like natural travelling companions for anyone drawn to Ratboys’ sweeter side as well as the rush of The Replacements.

Los Angeles band Sunday Mourners, meanwhile, brought sharper edges and avant-garde abrasion with their Television- and Richard Hell-indebted post-punk. The mood shifted to wiry and menacing, with clattering drum patterns and atonal guitar riffs eventually yielding a cover of Television’s ‘See No Evil’ fit for the CBGB stage circa-1976. If Former Champ warmed the room, Sunday Mourners roughed it up with some right hooks before the headliners hit the stage.

Former Champ performing 'Running Back' at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

Sunday Mourners performing 'See No Evil' (Television cover) at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

I’ll admit that I came to Ratboys a bit late, through 2023’s level-up hit The Window. The warmth of that record, together with Julia Steiner’s high, wistful vocals, sounded like an alt-country Alvvays to my ears. Working backwards through their catalogue revealed earlier perkier and punkier pockets too, particularly across 2017’s GN and parts of 2020’s Printer’s Devil, but The Window was the bright and bittersweet entry point.

2026’s Singin’ To An Empty Chair further expands their emotional palette.

The new album was shaped by Steiner’s experience with therapy and the ‘empty chair’ technique of imagined conversations. On the delicate shuffle of ‘Just Want You To Know The Truth’, that pain turns into cathartic courage by saying the hard part out loud, even if the dialogue remains hypothetical. It’s an incredibly personal song about rupture, rehearsal, and attempts to repair a rift, and on the night, she jokingly introduced it as a “rowdy one” (emotionally, that is).

The mood was not all dreamy and glum at The Garage though. Ratboys rock a lot harder live.

Having set up their own gear, Ratboys returned to the stage and confidently started off with four rollicking songs in a row from the new record (‘Open Up’, ‘Anywhere’, ‘Penny In The Lake’, and ‘Know You Then’). The quartet can be as raucous as they are rootsy, turning studio ache into full-room release through rippling guitar riffs and bouncy beats from drummer Marcus Nuccio. His energetic and effusive playing behind the kit reminded me of Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his octopus-armed style made for some joyful jamming.

Ratboys performing 'Anywhere’ at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

From my spot on the barrier, that close-quarters chemistry was clear to see across the tiny stage. Lead guitarist David Sagan often let loose with freeform fretwork, most spectacularly on the eight-minute epic ‘Black Earth, WI’ that closed the main set.

Sagan’s multi-minute solo meandered through almost half the runtime, full of bluesy bends and wailing feedback before Steiner returned to the mic to bring the song back home. It was the kind of performance that reminded you how much muscle lies beneath Ratboys’ melodic charm.

The band loved being back in London too. Steiner mentioned that they’d had been coming here for 10 years, and dedicated ‘Strange Love’, a short and sweet slow-dancer from the new record, to “the rats scurrying on the Underground”. It offered a gentle interlude before the jagged, proggy rush of ‘Light Night Mountains All That’ and the four Ratboys at their wildest.

Ratboys performing 'Black Earth, WI' at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

Ratboys performing 'Light Night Mountains All That’ at The Garage, London (21st May 2026)

The setlist leaned heavily into the new album, so much so that nearly the entire record got an outing, alongside earlier favourites like ‘Morning Zoo’, The Window’s title track, and ‘I Go Out At Night’ from Printer’s Devil.

I knew the setlist doubly firsthand.

Not only had I watched it unfold from the front row, close enough to see the shorthand at Sagan’s feet, but I also left with the thing itself. As the band stepped offstage, having one-two-punched us with an encore of the quirky ‘Alien With A Sleep Mask On’ and ‘Look To’, he leaned down, picked up the paper that had mapped the night, and handed it over.

For a band I found through The Window, it felt fulfilling to finally step through the door, with paper proof that my latecomer fandom had become physically real. It's alive. Oh, it's alive.

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