Posts Tagged ‘Emma Ruth Rundle’

CHELSEA WOLFE & EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” Anhedonia “

Posted: January 30, 2021 in MUSIC
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Chelsea Wolfe by Ben Chisholm

In what feels like a match made in goth/dark folk hell, Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle have released a collaborative single, “Anhedonia,” out now on Sargent House Records. It’s a haunting, bare-bones track, and it should come as no surprise that Chelsea and Emma’s soaring voices sound incredible together. Chelsea says:

I wrote “Anhedonia” after I experienced it during summer of 2019, then tucked the song away and moved forward with my acoustic album and subsequent North American tour. When COVID-19 hit and stay-at-home orders began in 2020, my European tour was cancelled and I had to fly home. Restless, I started listening through my archives of unfinished songs and little unused ideas. When I heard Anhedonia again, it hit me how strangely relevant the lyrics felt to current times. I’d been wanting to work on a song with Emma for a long time, so I recorded it and sent it her way. She graciously added her gorgeous vocals and lead guitar, and then Ben mixed it, adding his signature sound landscape as a fortress around the song. As I listened back to the final version, I was finally able to set free those emotions which I couldn’t feel back in 2019. I had worries around releasing the song, not wanting to romanticize the condition of anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure), but I also understood that it could possibly be cathartic for others who are struggling, as it was for me, to sing and dance my way out of a depression.

Emma adds, “I was moved to tears when she sent me Anhedonia, which made getting through the tracking very emotional and slow on my end. I love the way the guitars I tracked morphed in Ben’s mix. The whole song swirls in a poignant eddy of sorrowful sound and still takes a hard swing at my heart hearing it now.”

Last year, Chelsea released the debut album by her new project with Jess Gowrie, Mrs. Piss. She’s also one of the guests on Xiu Xiu’s just-announced duets album.

Emma released a collaborative album with Thou last year (one of our favourite metal albums of 2020), and they followed it with a new EP earlier this month. Wolfe’s most recent solo studio album, Birth of Violence, was released in 2019. 

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & Thou – ” May Our Chambers Be Full “

Posted: December 15, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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best albums of 2020 Emma Ruth Rundle Thou

Given our previous adoration both of Emma Ruth Rundle’s immaculate On Dark Horses it seemed inevitable that this record would rate with us . Each artist has a hybrid tendency, the capacity to remain in the realm of hyperemotive dreamstates, a space induced by both heavy atmospherics and a keen post-psychedelic sense of melody. On paper, this pairing makes tremendous sense; each seems to sit on either side of a divide, one slightly heavier than the other while one sits more in dreamy shoegaze than the other, but each containing traces of the other. What you would hope, on seeing this dual-headline pairing on a record sleeve, is that each of them would pull those hidden elements out of the other, not just gifting Emma a greater weight but revealing in retrospect that weight as it existed in her earlier material, just as Thou has their evocative colours and dreamy post-psychedelia laid bare in their earlier works. And, thank god, that’s precisely what they did.

There’s something soothing, of course, with the highest rated record among us being a collaborative record in a period where human connection feels desperately, painfully needed. COVID has worn on all of us; it can be hard to convince yourself of the necessity of writing about music when people are getting sick and dying, easy to let deadlines for columns careen off the rails as you worry about aging family and distant friends. That sense of communalism at work, the implicit hope of the title, certainly struck a chord. But the most potent aspect of the record was, inevitably, its fullness. This is the trait, ultimately, that is most richly satisfying about each of these artists on their own. Emma Ruth Rundle nearly won a Best Song nod a few years back precisely for this reason, her songs billowing out into clouds of drama and history that feels so often more like stepping into another psyche, the voice inside of your head composing a new universe.

Thou, especially over the past three or so years, have been much the same, radically expanding their scope and sonic vision such that they feel like a limitless group no longer purely defined by heavy metal. These two in unison not only drew out hidden or obscured elements of each other; they intensified those obvious and shared elements as well, producing a record that is both at once the best record of the year and among the best of either artist’s bodies of work. 

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May Our Chambers Be Full straddles a similar, very fine line both musically and thematically. While Emma Ruth Rundle’s standard fare is a blend of post-rock-infused folk music, and Thou is typically known for its down-tuned, doomy sludge, the conjoining of the two artists has created a record more in the vein of the early ’90s Seattle sound and later ’90s episodes of Alternative Nation, while still retaining much of the artists’ core identities. Likewise, the lyrical content of the album is a marriage of mental trauma, existential crises, and the ecstatic tradition of the expressionist dance movement. “Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.” Melodic, melancholic, heavy, visceral.

R#eleased October 30th, 2020

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” Staying Power “

Posted: July 5, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The cover to Emma Ruth Rundle’s fourth solo record, “On Dark Horses”, bears a blurry photo of the songwriter obscuring her face with a large toy horse with broken legs. The photo suggests something candid but also hidden, graceful but also fractured—a fitting portrait for an artist who has established a career by vacillating between shrouding herself in mystery and exposing her wounds to the world.

Previous album Marry Us mirrors On Dark Horses’ Light Song, with the union of Rundle’s siren vocals and Patterson’s poised baritone conjuring a dizzying and feverish update on the duets of Johnny Cash and June Carter. The eight tracks of On Dark Horses capture the evolution of Rundle as an artist, with vestigial traces of the savvy guitar work of Electric Guitar: One, the siren song beauty of Some Heavy Ocean, and the amplified urgency of Marked For Death all factoring into the album’s rich tapestry. Rundle arrives at the end of the album with an ode to a traumatized and heartbroken friend on the grand and triumphant You Don’t Have To Cry.

Emma Ruth Rundle has released a new single ‘Staying Power’, recorded during the sessions for her last album, “On Dark Horses”.

“There is very little mystery as to what this song is about. The lyrics are not metaphorical. It’s about being a touring musician and trying to survive, to conjure the self discipline to go on without sacrificing sensitivity. How we can become hardened as a result of constantly selling our feelings, how I didn’t want that to happen to me but could feel the callousness building. It’s also about the financial feast or famine and whether a little immediate monetary gain is worth the expenditure of youth. It’s about wondering how long I might be allowed to do this and the fear that it could end at any moment – with covid the song has some renewed relevance in that regard. It talks about what it means to endure and what the rewards and consequences of such persistence might be.”

Emma Ruth Rundle “Staying Power” available now on Sargent House, Recorded during the sessions for “On Dark Horses”

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EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” You Don’t Have To Cry “

Posted: December 2, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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A message about the song/video from Emma Ruth Rundle and Blake Armstrong. “I wrote this song for my dear friend, artist Blake Armstrong, out of love and in the hope it would console and encourage strength after he expressed to me his fears about living as an openly gay male in a country that’s led by an unabashedly hateful figure – and the effects said figure might have on the the country, its laws and its citizens. I hope that the message of the song and video can comfort and empower those who feels marginalized or mistreated or unsafe. I’m happy we finally had a chance to realize our idea for this video. It means so much to us both.”

ERR Blake Armstrong says: “The main feeling I’ve felt has been the level of uncertainty that has made its ugly head known as of recent. Fear is how I feel. Growing up in Texas, I was used to closing myself off or being aware of how I expressed myself for fear of violence. Leaving the south and moving to other parts of the country and even to Canada, I finally felt safe to share myself and personality because I was around like-minded individuals. It felt free. But as of late in this country, that fear has returned wearing a red hat that has made me want to quiet myself and the freedom of who I am. What’s worse is not only feeling this not just personally but also nationally. I feel hated. I think with ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ and this video, it’s a reassurance to be who you are now more than ever. That there are people who will embrace you but that regardless, nothing is more important than embracing yourself. You were always meant to be the person you are and that there isn’t any amount of hate or bigotry holding you back from living your truest life.” Blake Armstrong

From the album “On Dark Horses”, available now on Sargent House

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” On Dark Horses “

Posted: January 5, 2019 in MUSIC
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As if she doesn’t have enough to be proud of from her work with post-rock outfit Red Sparowes, psych-metal band Marriages, and slowcore collective Nocturne, Emma Ruth Rundle also put out a delectably moody eight-song goth-folk collection this year. Heavy on reverb-drenched atmospherics, Rundle’s latest finds her accompanying her own hypnotically fluttering vocal confessionals with glistening clean-toned SGs, jangly Jazzmasters, and doomy 6-string washes that float atop a backdrop of drums that alternate between loudly and subtly thundering.

From the new album “On Dark Horses”, released September 14th, 2018 on Sargent House.

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” Marked For Death “

Posted: December 28, 2016 in MUSIC
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Emma Ruth Rundle is a doom-folk/ambient folk singer/songwriter and visual artist from Los Angeles. You may know her from her work with the post-punk bands Marriages and Red Sparrowes. She’s also released a few solo recordings. First was the Electric Guitar One EP in 2011. That record is thirty minutes of continuous instrumental ambient electric guitar in six chapters. It was written and recorded during the Red Sparrowes tour of Europe in 2010. In 2014, she released her first proper solo record called Some Heavy Ocean. That one is still plenty ambient, but leaning towards folk. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the first two Mazzy Star records.

Emma Ruth Rundles lives in LA and participates in music (Marriages, Red Sparowes, The Nocturnes – but alone) and visual/video art. Managed by Sargent House.

In September of this year, she released her sophomore album “Marked for Death”. As the album title suggests, there’s a lot of death imagery and other explorations on the issue of mortality. It’s dark and a bit heavy, but it’s a lovely record that demands a thorough listen. A lot of the songs are about a relationship gone wrong. The word on the street is that all of the songs are connected by that thread, and that it’s actually a narrative about the same failing (or failed) relationship. Frequent readers of the blog know that I’m a real sucker for that kind of sad gal stuff. I’m reminded a little bit of Cat Power, and also of the great Torres.

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The whole record is really good, and I think it should be listened to, with no distractions. That said, I really like this song:“Protection” by Emma Ruth Rundle.

I like the fact that it’s low-end heavy. I love the chorus or delay or whatever on the vocals. I adore the fact that it’s relatively quiet for each of the verses, but louder in the chorus, and at the end of the chorus, it’s thunderously loud and fuzzy. I love that loud and fuzzy bit, but what I love even more is when it comes to a rapid halt and is juxtaposed right up against the quiet verse. Rundle’s voice is beautiful, soft and sweet, but also very strong. We shouldn’t lose sight of that even with all the talk of the glory of the noise and the fury brought on by the effects pedals.

 

Marked for Death was released on September 30th via Sargent House Records. You can buy physical copies via Hello Merch here. It’s also available for download from Bandcamp here.

thanks to https://thisisthatsong.wordpress.com

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE – ” Marked For Death “

Posted: December 18, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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This is a record that decisively indicates what’s to be found within then duly delivers with a thundering, fearsome bout of heavyweight indie rock. Marked for death? You better damn well believe it.

Something like Cat Power battling her way through the heaviest of thunderstorms, the new record is a marked stride forward in to the abyss from her 2014 ‘Some Heavy Ocean’ LP, the eight tracks on ‘Marked For Death’ positively burn with intensity, even before you dig in to the wildly striking set of lyrics that accompany these dramatic compositions. Indicative of the soaring, stifling nature of the record as a whole, the opening, and title, track stands as one of the year’s most ominous tracks; “Who else is going to love someone like you that’s marked for death?” Emma Ruth Rundle bellows with all the fiery ferocity of someone who sees the world a little differently to most. A monumental effort not for the weary-hearted; but a monumental effort all the same.

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Emma Ruth Rundle lives in Los Angeles and participates in music (Marriages, Red Sparowes, The Nocturnes – but alone) and visual/video art. Managed by Sargent House.