Among the broad expanse of Emma Ruth Rundle’s oeuvre, you’ll find psychedelic tinged shoegaze, Pink Floyd-y post rock, no-holds-barred art rock, dark folk, doom metal, and more—not to mention her expansive visual work.
Even as far-reaching as her catalog is, nothing can prepare you for EG2: Dowsing Voice, the second of her experimental, instrumental records released under her name. But where Electric Guitar One still mostly stayed within the realms of post rock, this record is positively feral.
I’ve been going through a massive Emma Ruth Rundle phase lately. It all started when I revisited On Dark Horses and realized that it’s probably in my top fifty records of all time. In the couple weeks since, I’ve revisited the many, many other projects of hers I have.
When that wasn’t enough, I took to Discogs to fill the gaps in my collection. Most glaring of these was Some Heavy Ocean, her first outing as a solo singer-songwriter (as opposed to her proper solo debut, Electric Guitar: One, which was a series of instrumental improvisations). And while Some Heavy Ocean doesn’t have as much metallic heaviness as her later solo records, it’s hardly straightforward folk either. The sonic palette borrows a lot of atmosphere from her time in post rock and shoegaze bands. Continue reading
In the last few months, my awareness of Emma Ruth Rundle has absolutely exploded. I was introduced to her most recent solo record On Dark Horses when I was assigned it while writing for a Belgium-based review site, and even then she was only introduced to me as the guitarist from Red Sparowes.
After almost a year and a half of knowing and loving just that album, I started to dig deeper, falling in love with her alternative/post-rock/psychedelic outfit Marriages, psych-folk outfit Nocturnes (someone sell me their vinyl copy plz), and her recent collaboration with doom metallurgists Thou.
But it’s taken me until a few weeks ago to listen to any of her other solo work, and once I did, the obsession continued. Marked For Death, her second song-based solo album—and regarded by many to be her best—is a crushing work of dark, brooding Southern gothic that showcases her stunning talent as both a songwriter and an ambient architect.
For all of the personal, political, and global calamity of the hellacious year that was 2020, there was a lot of great music that came out. Like…a LOT.
It makes sense: with tours, festivals, and live shows canceled, most bands turned to the studio instead. The result is perhaps the most challenging year to quantify into a nice, neat list.
But that hasn’t stopped me from trying.
And while I often cop out and just make a list of all the music I’ve purchased, this year is difficult because I’ve purchased all of this music this year, on one format or another.
Speaking of Emma Ruth Rundle…among the long list of projects in her genre-spanning CV, one of my favorite releases is Salome, to date the only full-length project of the experimental group Marriages, featuring fellow Red Sparowes member Greg Burns.
Salome has entranced me since I was introduced to its chameleonic, at times eldritch, blend of post rock, alternative, and metal sensibilities. But that chimeric quality is perhaps even more prominent on Kitsune, the EP that preceded their full length by three years.
Emma Ruth Rundle has spent most of her career on the fringes of the metal scene. Besides playing guitar in prog/post-metal band Red Sparowes, the gothic folk of her solo work and Nocturnes and the spacey ambience of Marriages has always had a darkness that can’t totally be called metal, but it doesn’t quite fit outside of it.
Similarly, the thick, tar-throated sludge of Baton Rouge’s Thou has always coated over a tender melodic heart that would escape most listeners, buried as it was beneath layers of molten guitar.
On paper, there’s little in common between the two. But the collaborative album May Our Chambers Be Full proves that the two entities have much more in common than you might think.
There are three words that are almost guaranteed to make me pay attention to a band: “Emma. Ruth. Rundle.”
Outside of her darkly beautiful doom-folk solo material, she also has a number of other projects, such as the post-metal-meets-Pink-Floyd of Red Sparowes, the psychedelic alt-folk of Nocturnes, and this, the dark, grooving, vibey Marriages (featuring Andrew Clinco, a.k.a. Deb Demure of Drab Majesty on drums).
2015’s Salome, to date the only full length from Marriages, combines all of my favorite parts of Rundle’s separate projects into a single work that is as gorgeous as it is crushing.
At midnight tonight, the earth will continue another circle around our star.
And while it might be a pretty arbitrary marker of time, it’s a great way to group music together to quantify it. And since I am an amateur music critic, I’m obligated to create my own year-end lists.
2018 was a banner year for music—not just because of the relentless onslaught of incredible new albums, but I also saw more shows than ever and discovered a fair amount of music that I missed. And in this article, I’m counting them all down. Continue reading
The last couple years, I’ve been noticing a trend of female singer-songwriters picking up electric guitars and coating their otherwise gentle compositions with thick layers of doom metal and shoegaze (see also: Chelsea Wolfe, King Woman). It’s a simple enough formula, but it works, and I am here for it. Continue reading