If you allow your heart, your life to slow down these songs will aerate your bloodstream.
And then quicken your heart again. This Can’t Be My Life (Wrong Records) is a slice through someone’s body, looking at hidden beauties amid the mess.
Ruth Gerson’s series of stories pull at your conscience – like trials and unsettling events always do for the introspective.
She fell in the river before she could cry. The spring tide pulled her under. I jumped into save her, the waves came like fire. They pushed me aside as they flung her. Her neck snapped like a branch as her head hit the banks and the rocks ripped her blue dress right from her.”
From “Black Water”, those words happened to be the first I heard from Gerson’s new CD. Whispered, torn from her lips as if telling someone what she just saw, still standing out in the cold crying. A story that seems to be of untimely, violent, drowning death, through the voice of the murder. Yet it has a 1,000 interpretations and new ones come at each listen. The perfect picture of atmosphere and scene the words created made me turn my head sideways, quizzically, ready to believe there was something worth paying attention to.
“Take It Slow”, the last song on the just released …My Life similarly has character, more than just evoked feelings. A journey through a back road – literal or of the mind – everything at first a blur, rather than distinct. It’s an admonishment to herself to look at details and draw from them rather than not having any idea where she’s going so quickly.
So many of Gerson’s songs on this latest release – recorded and mixed by Nic Hard (The Bravery) and Daniel Wise (Scissor Sisters) make you want to find out more about what’s happening and what will happen next; the lyrics pushed to the fore, with simple vocal and guitar or vocal and piano arrangements. In a way it’s ironic because life – and wanting to raise new life – pushed the release of this album back three years. So the life written about then is different now, and now is a better place, she says.
Gerson’s arrangements tell complex stories in uncomplicated ways. Yet underdone can be overdone. The simplicity doesn’t show or save “Does You Heart Weep” and “Hazel.” Both drown in tears and earnest catatonia; good for people in similar misery, yet not quite telling their tale of woe in a way that brings empathy or even sympathy. Rather than the other tales told with the intent share, with these two songs Gerson seems to be talking only to herself.
Then “You Lie” comes dancing along after them as mental relief. There’s a quicker, pushing, foot-tapping, hip-grinding beat that somehow, because of the pace and despite the lyrics, manages to give back the hope that the two songs before it tried to bloodily rip away.
Throughout the album, there’s an anger, threaded gently and running deep, relentless and ceaseless — shared with the likes of Fiona, Ani, Kitten, Alanis, Liz or Tori, the edge of Sheryl, without sounding quite like any of them. This vocal coach has a rich voice that holds onto words, pulling every possible expression out, exposed.
For better or worse, “Stay With Me” is the most Tori-like. Layered self-referential, somewhat under-enunciated lyrics that, despite the apparent clarity of the title, still leave a great deal open to interpretation. You also hear melody strains in the background of Nirvana’s, “Heart-Shaped Box” which if not accidental is pure genius.
It’s beautiful.
Some music out there edges your eyes closed until you sleep. You can close your eyes to Ruth Gerson, but she’ll keep your brain active, restless, as, laying next to her, you look for life’s many meanings.
Ruth Gerson – http://ruthgerson.com
Funny, I just thought it was depressing and muddy.