WATCH: Pile Gets Confrontational in “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller” Video

Rick Maguire takes on the ghoulish policy advisor in the video for the Boston rockers’ latest single.
WATCH: Pile Gets Confrontational in “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller” Video

Rick Maguire takes on the ghoulish policy advisor in the video for the Boston rockers’ latest single.

Words: Mike LeSuer

April 04, 2019

It’s hard to believe that with the perpetually revolving door of tragic figures inflicted upon the public consciousness courtesy of the current presidential administration, so few of them have been singled out as subjects of balladry. They’re real-life, hyperbolically antagonistic literary personas that you have free reign to dunk on because they’re so unspeakably corrupt, overtly racist, and usually culled from some list of favors the president seems to owe his friends in the darkest recesses of the businesses of entertainment and white supremacy.

Friendless senior policy advisor Stephen Miller is one such figure, who’s found himself the Chris Dudley to the media’s, the Internet’s, his former classmates’, and even his own family’s indomitable Shaq Diesel. The latest blow comes from Boston-bred rockers Pile, whose aggressively taunting new single takes aim at Miller. “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller” is pumped with malaise—Rick Maguire’s snarling vocals contrasting with much of their forthcoming LP Green & Gray’s more reserved grunge—while the video relies heavily on the conventions of found-footage horror with all of its nauseating close-ups and fleeting images of an ambiguous ghoulie.

“Usually, it’s difficult for me to concentrate much vitriol on one person, especially one I don’t know personally,” Maguire says, “but Stephen Miller is the exception. On my better days, the idea of the president just saddens me because I know he’s profoundly confused and damaged beyond repair, but Stephen Miller is a different brand of smug racist. I could imagine him being on my bus in high school, and that, I think, brings to light a different but related set of complicated emotions.”

Green & Gray is out May 3 on Exploding in Sound. Preorder it here before asking Rick anything.