Ruby Frey

Last Friday 10 August We went to Empty Bottle to go see Circuit De Yeux, more on her on a separate post. Ruby Fray owned this place as well. I looked up one video of the headliner but we were totally unprepared for Ruby Fray. They were fucking crazy. Feels like the impact of seeing School Of Seven Bells and Warpaint under the same tiny roof. The live show hit differently than the CD later.....wait. It totally works for me. I feel fortunate for knowing the music this way. I have not been out much so I was wanting for something to imprint on me. We parked next to the Church on Augusta. Ruby Fray pretty much had me from the first song. I did no research on them until now, well after the gig. You know with me the hurricane has to hit first, then I figure out what hit me and try to catch up. Before I could hold the moment with words the intense weirdness has to hold me before I can name it. I walk in not knowing shit and so for a moment....ok longer than that, I thought RF was CDY. My pictures mostly focus on Emily Beanblossom the guitarist/lead singer. I don't know if it was pure laziness to not move from my spot but the center of the moment was Emily. The crowd seemed modest in size the whole night. Oh, but guess who I saw....Dan The Fan! We usually like the same local bands and so when I see him I know I'm in for something I will like, if not yet. Ruby Fray were like fixers in this haunted, enchanted Otherworld that I wandered into, and kind enough they were to guide me through it. There is no getting away from calling them psychedelic. On CD the songs also have that rural darkness that I found in Man Is Man, Roma Di Luna, but y'all haven't looked them up neither. Rural, and psychedelic is how I can begin to describe Pith, the CD. Like they got no problem taking mushrooms and going where there's little indoor plumbing. If Julee Cruise kept your attention even with The Voice Of Love. It's easy to like the Twin Peaks related Floating Into The Night. So talk to me after you familiarize with Kool Kat Walk....alright where's that fucking map. I'm lost. Hmm oh, yeah. Julee is urban, sophisticated and mysterious. Ruby Fray is who she rents the cabin from. My parents, when I was a kid they would take me to go see relatives that worked far into the farmlands of Illinois. I never liked going as fondly as I remember now. The air smelled different, these relatives seemed so at ease with the quicker country darkness. Their work on the white farmers land kept me safely within the margins of city life, their work. Where was I taking this? Oh....with Ruby Fray, the voice to me wise and womanly at ease with this rural other-world. Live it was more of a full band sound. The music is different....more intimate on CD but no less striking, yet still for that reason I cannot say which ones I heard live first. So which songs sold me again on CD? Northern Washington, Closed Eye, Penny, Barren Hill bring me to a campfire where I go to warm my hands. These are cold, bad lands RF bring you to, but wiser you will feel when familiar to it. I wish I had lyrics to read. On stage you see and hear the whole band and on CD it feels more intimate, but still very intense. So if you bought the CD on the belief that what you hear live will be the same....keep the CD. Give it the chance to see where it takes you.
Zig