Chatterton

BIOGRAPHY

“I do it with my heart on my sleeve,” Pierce sings on Blouse, the lead single and closing track of Chatterton’s latest EP, Tiny Empire. It’s the first release from the Oxnard, CA-based duo, consisting of Brock Pierce and Logan Scrivner, since last year’s debut Fields of This. The lyric embodies the new EP well—especially coming from a pair who often prefer to keep things abstract rather than confessional. Like its predecessor, Scrivner is still at the helm as the primary producer. Unlike their debut, which was tracked completely at Scrivner’s home studio, Tiny Empire was mostly recorded at Northernmost Boojum, a professional studio in the Ojai Valley, during the final months of 2024.

Across five tracks, Tiny Empire highlights the pair at their sharpest, only emboldened by the newly polished production. No example quite better than Source 2, its opening track—a marimba-dense guitar instrumental lifted by a ’70s progressive rock-adjacent flute solo. Followed by “Explainin’,” the EP’s most upbeat track: an acoustic ballad soaked in thick fuzz bass, bubbly synth, and jangly guitars. The project keeps its cards close, often leaving just hints of vulnerability, none more striking than the EP’s penultimate track, “Punching Bag,” which sounds as if it could have been pulled straight from an early Modest Mouse record. The track shows Pierce earnestly letting his guard down; “We drink so we forget / About the way we feel / Our fathers have damned us / I guess we’re one and the same” he sings in a near-pathetic whine, before exploding into a sax-shrieking frenzy. Tiny Empire feels like a natural, earned progression for the duo, with “Blouse” being a fitting close for the EP. The track, punctuated by lush saxophone and trumpet accompaniment, elevated by the additional vocal contributions from Lily Piette, wraps the EP up on a high note. Pierce may grumble that “everything has changed” on “Punching Bag,” yet Tiny Empire stands as a testament that sometimes change can work in your favor. - Mairead Flynn