We've had our eye on Ruby for a number of years now—ever since her plaintive track "Your Mum" took us by surprise with her amazing vocal abilities and emotionally raw lyricism. This rise to fame has been steady in her native Australia and increasingly around the world: she's had plenty of spins on BBC, and KCRW, and of course triple j.
A long-awaited debut LP "I’m gonna die with this frown on my face" is now available, and the title track is a wonderful extension of the lyrical sound that she has defined for herself. Early on we pegged her in that alt-folk channel that flows between the works of Margaret Glaspy, Katy Kirby, and Laura Marling, and her new work establishes a beautiful sense of range and poise within that space. Hers is the kind of music that is difficult to describe but easy to understand. Ruby touches on a sense of shared truth that typically goes unsaid: the uncomfortable circumstance of having her boyfriend compare her cooking to his mother's, for example—or the cumbrous idea that some of us tend to operate quite comfortably in a state of near-constant gloom. Whatever her subject matter, Ruby's instinct is to go straight for the heart of it, interrogating the social norms that have gone without criticism for too long by virtue of simple habit. The result is honest, unabashed music that is both complex and delightfully pungent as well as perfectly aligned with a new generation that is more than ready to shake up the status quo.
