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RUBY FRAY

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Ruby Fray

Grackle

K Records

After her debut album Pith [KLP239], released on K, Emily Beanblossom of Ruby Fray spent the next two years touring the U.S., selling her handmade soaps and working on the bare bones of her next album to be released this fall: Grackle [KLP251]. Coming a long way from her debut album, Pith [KLP239], Ruby Fray's upcoming release Grackle [KLP251] blends Americana sweetness with sludgy dissonance. Emily and long time collaborator Nick Botka, teamedup with Pith producder, Ben Hargett, to record the album at Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, WA. Their newest recording preserves the playful jangly genre-bouncing enervation found in their previous workwhile insisting on a more disciplined approach to songwriting.

The album opens with a slow synthesizer prelude "You Should Go", setting the tone for listless anthems characterized by Beanblossom's harmonies and hollers. "Vespers", a morning prayer, introduces a coy letter to a wayward sailor in "Photograph". Then, with a sharp twist of a post-modern dance beat paired with the tremolo of a Finnish lap harp, "Barbara" takes the stage to insert bitter anecdotes, and "Anthony" invokes a dark spaghetti western composition supporting Gregorian vocal harmonies. "It's Mine", with its trip-hop drum and bass vehemence, finishes into a chaotic degradation of off-kilter cello chords.

TRACK LISTING

1. You Should Go
2. Carry Me Down
3. Vespers
4. Photographs
5. The Grackle
6. Barbara
7. Anthony
8. It’s Mine
9. Reprise

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Ruby Fray

Pith

K Records

Anyone who has seen Emily Beanblossom perform has surely left entirely taken with her. As the lead singer of Christmas, a band whose unique style of psych rock made them a cult marvel, Emily sold out both shows and records, due in no small part to her captivating, cultivated persona and the rare power of her voice. A vagabond for our ilk, she has lived life on the road and in collaborations, drifting down the line until she was called back to her family farm outside Chicago, Ill. Here she paused to lay down the hollowed noise that would become Ruby Fray.

Her premier album 'Pith' is a string of musical gems that range from harmonic americana and folk to shadowy psychedelia, united in their spectral chamber arrangements. Each of the twelve tracks on 'Pith' come from demos Emily has been keeping close, and showcase her varieties of influence. “And the Moon,” with its steady drum machine loop, eerie harmonies and mandolin strings stands apart from its follower, “Mint Ice Cream,” a playful Americana-style duet with Calvin Johnson. “Closed Eye” is the same, a drifting melody punctuated by tinny drums and fuzzy guitar strumming. But this is the beauty of Pith—like the single, “Let’s Grow Older,” it gambols, and then falls to despair and questioning, is both the blossom and the thorny edge.

Ruby Fray is a dark star risen, and the power and soul of Emily’s voice changes all that it shines upon. Pith includes the talents of numerous Pacific Northwest masterminds: producer & engineer Ben Hargett (who recorded the Christmas LP), songwriting and production assistant Ian Van Veen (Legs The Crab, Georgy), and harmony/strings specialist Giselle Garcia. As per K / Dub Narcotic tradition, a number of artists from the K roster also play on Pith, including Arrington de Dionyso, Gordon Baker (Mailaikat dan Singa, Desolation Wilderness), Andrew Dorsett (LAKE, Desolation Wilderness), Angelo Spencer, Markly Morrison (LAKE), Jake Jones (Christmas), and Calvin Johnson. Quite honestly her vocals are so beautiful, you almost feel they’re being wasted on a raw punk band like Christmas. But then again Christmas is a classic punk band without a lot of nonsense and it’s Beanblossom’s vocals that make they’re music special. - Secretly Important, October 2011.

TRACK LISTING

1. And The Moon
2. Mint Ice Cream
3. Closed Eye
4. What’s All This Talk
5. Northern Washington
6. Young Scholar
7. Let’s Grow Older
8. Jandk
9. Penny
10. Ohow
11. Barren Hill
12. Wilt Worker

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