You can’t help but smile while looking at the adorbs photo of Baby Ruby that graces the cover of her debut album, perfectly illustrating its title.
Johannesburg-born, Melbourne-based songwriter Ruby Gill has said that Mary Oliver and Leonard Cohen “taught [her] about words” and the opening title track’s opening lines immediately demonstrate her knack for verbalising internal conflict: “I’ve got one request, it’s simple/ Please don’t let the people in/ I am nursing an intolerance for social interaction.”
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Striking standout track ‘Anchor’ – with its syncopated drum beats, feedback squall, foreboding guitar lines and intensifying vocal harmonies – tunes into Radiohead’s frequency.
“I just wanna know/ When I can hug my mum/ My stepfather is getting old/ And someone’s bullying his son/ And I can’t help…” – ouch, my heart! Gill wrote ‘Borderlines’ – an ode to the Australian government’s “bureaucratic nonsense” – while here on a temporary bridging visa.
Whether she’s singing about ‘public panic attacks’, arguing about driving directions (‘In time with the engine turning over’) or pondering “Why are you making me dinner?/ Why am I still here?” following a trip to an ex-boyfriend’s house to collect her things (‘All the birds under the Westgate’), Gill’s delivery switches from sweet-sounding to cracking with raw emotion on a dime.
A classically trained pianist and self-confessed Missy Higgins tragic, Gill’s vocal tone and devastatingly beautiful, wistful melodies are testament to her fandom.
Label: Independent
Release date: 2 September
