100 Greatest Songs of the 20’s So Far #58 Chat Pile – Wicked Puppet Dance

Released: 2022

As mission statements for a record go, confronting your audience and the outside world doesn’t get much more direct than when Chat Pile’s bassist Stin said of their 2022 debut album God’s Country that “More than anything, we’re trying to capture the anxiety and fear of seeing the world fall apart.”

It’s a stunning, ugly, aggressive, corrosive work, on which their minimalist, self produced aesthetic is smeared across music traversing half a dozen way points. Formed in Oklahoma City, the quartet Initially found themselves ostracized by their local contemporaries, perhaps unsurprisingly as they constituted a scene of one. In the end however they discovered pockets of musical space containing like minded bands by casting the net further, and after signing with The Flenser they found a label that embraced their worldview.

This isn’t stuff to take home to meet your parents; God’s Country visits subject matter including serial killers, addiction, homelessness and authoritarianism. Wicked Puppet Dance is no lighter than the rest, but with it’s primitive electronic signatures and singer Raygun Busch’s indignant howl it carries all the alienated hallmarks of Atomizer-era Big Black. Anxiety and fear? It’s got all you’ll ever need.