With Gem, Ruby Friedman Orchestra keeps it real
Ruby Friedman is a rocker, but the songs on Gem, her debut album, don’t rock in the traditional sense. The music is dark, slow and menacing, full of violent frustration and shattered expectations. Her orchestra teases unexpected sounds out of their instruments to complement her bleak lyrics. The distorted twang of a honky-tonk guitar clashes with the grainy sound of a banjo that sounds like it was sampled from an old Edison cylinder recording. Friedman’s vocals are full of intense emotion, as she explores a landscape littered with aching hearts and unfulfilled dreams.
“There is no paucity of ‘pep yourself up and be happy’ songs out there,” says Friedman, “but it’s a struggle for me to feel authentic in a world that’s so broken and twisted. I can’t sing that happy crap. I feel people struggling around me, the sensitive ones mostly, so these songs aren’t grim to me. I call them real.”
The sounds on Gem suggest a sci-fi spaghetti-Western, with hints of gospel and country floating through the mix. “This is what happens when one is allowed to use all their inspiration and influence, without being coerced by commercially interested corporations, imagining themselves tastemakers,” says Friedman. “I took opera training when I was six, but my first boyfriend played rockabilly guitar. He turned me onto Mahalia Jackson, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Bessie Smith. He encouraged me to start writing, but I don’t write unless it feels like I’ll die if I don’t. I have a love/hate relationship with this calling of mine. The chorus of ‘Fugue In L.A. Minor’ appeared to me in a bathtub in Los Angeles, the verses came out in Brooklyn right after Lou Reed died, and I’m singing it in the style of Bessie Smith meets Jerry Lee Lewis, so go figure.”
—j. poet
