RUBY GILL
Some Kind Of Control (independent)
DRIVING TOWARDS THE BENDS, PAST NEWPORT BEACH on Sunday afternoon – a day of wind and rain and rain and wind, interspersed with deceptive sun and confounding calm – I caught a glimpse below of the turbulence, the roiling surf that seemed little more than white crests on white surface from sand to horizon. I imagined what it would be like in there: exhilarating, legs pulled from underneath, head and shoulders bashed from above, heart shaken, and every knockdown followed by another one and another one just when you thought you were going to have a second to breathe and prepare.
That is what it is like listening to Some Kind Of Control.
Which is not because it is a raucous, turbulent assault on your senses. Indeed, songs sound deceptively quiet, confoundingly calm, its elements simple. Ruby Gill’s voice rolls out like someone emerging from under the blankets at first light - unhurried, casually close, stretching and sighing. Even when backing vocals swell behind it, that voice holds attention without flourish, confident in its ability to bring you in and keep you attached.
Piano is the principal, and sometimes only, instrument in several tracks; guitars mostly are acoustic, and when electric, underplay their hand deliberately; and bass and drums, when there, are unobtrusive and for colour and mostly not rhythm or propulsion. Everything is self-effacing, taking up space in an area that might be called folk, though mainly because it’s not rock, not dance, not electronic, not country, so by a process of elimination must be … folk. In truth its form remains pop music at its most intimate in the same way and the same places Laura Marling and Aldous Harding exist.
The titles suggest anything but stormy emotions, with names like Room Full Of Human Male Politicians or Space Love, Under The Flying Foxes On The Last Night Of Summer or Touch Me There. Even How Chimpanzees Reassure Each Other. And the album name offers the prospect of getting a handle on things, of not succumbing, of getting out ok. All of which must have you wondering where the whitewater body-bashing actually happens. Ah, yes.
Gill’s lyrics knock you over, pause as you get up, and knock you over again. Take How Chimpanzees Reassure Each Other, which is a plea for comfort, for support, for help, wrapped in a song of what could be love, or pure desperation. “Touch me, touch me/Tell me that I’ll be all right,” she sings with lightness that almost, but can’t, skip. “I know you can’t fix it/But maybe I’ll sleep tonight”.
And how would you touch her? “Press your palm down onto my chest/Tell me to breathe slower, I’ll do my best,” Gill sings, adding with an edge that is implied rather than expressed. “Under the table, kick off your shoes/Wrap your legs round mine until it bruises.”
In Touch Me There, a song of recrimination about past decisions (“I haven’t been kissing the people I want to/Been making excuses but mostly they’re nonsense”), and previous deceptions (“I’ve heard myself lying/Like I don’t like women/Like I don’t feel anything except when I’m drinking”) flows into celebration of a chance to get it right (“I don’t want to be angry with you there are above me/I want to feel power in this little body … Want you to look over like you can’t wait any longer”).
Need is met, truth is said. And yet, and yet … and yet here is more, there is still fear in the moment. “I’m doing my best to let go to get over/To silence the devil that sits on my shoulder/Who tries to convince me that I am an angel/When I just want you to fuck me on the table.”
The trepidations and trauma are not just internal, they are existential. In collapsing environments (“I cannot function in this man-made destruction … Somewhere out there that is a man who thinks he made nature”) and destructive systems (“I have some questions, like what’s a neo-liberal?/And what’s a girl to do when her back’s against the wall”), or harmful pairings (“You been thinking about leaving/Not just this house – this whole planet/You’ve planned it”).
But they all come back to decisions that must be made by each person alone, no matter how much you ask someone else to save you. “You just say take my hand, interact, make me exist/There is a black hole in my life and my music … I don’t want to think about the bad things/Can you help me out and take the weight of all these bad things.”
And that, quietly but remorselessly, is why Some Kind Of Control knocks you over again and again. And why you keep standing up for more.
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