Ruby Friedman returns with a vibrant mix of styles and stories.
Newly signed to record label Label 51, established artist Ruby Friedman (and Orchestra) continues to mix americana with more diverse musical styles and a fascinating ability to craft a story. On “Chimes After Midnight”, Friedman says she is, “… giving voice to remarkable people who time will erase otherwise, ordinary men and women who changed history. Like chimes after midnight, theirs are the voices you would not hear — people in the dark.”
As the initial bars of the album opener ‘Honeystomach’ ring out, the listener would be forgiven for double-checking the genre as a symphony of strings and piano back an operatic wail; however soon we are on safer ground when banjo and fiddle kick in to meld with the orchestra as the artist shares a reimagining of the fate of missing singer-songwriter Connie Converse. The track concludes with a suitably unnerving fiddle and banjo finale. Slightly overdriven guitars and riffs, sprinkled with more orchestral strings, frame Friedman’s expressive voice and dark lyrics to unfold stories of chemical warfare during the American Civil War (‘Music Row’) and dystopian love in ‘From the Storm‘. Partially autobiographical ‘Flower Whore’ is about “opium, flowers, money, and sex work” set to a tense and at times discordant string arrangement. Changing styles once again, this time to a slow blues, ‘When the Hangman’ is a narrative triptych in which women’s lives are wrecked by those closest to them. Just after halfway, ‘Milky Way’ pivots the album into pop territory with a string-soaked anthem dedicated to influential 80s alt-rocker and lead singer of The Pixies, Frank Black. Rich orchestral strings reappear for ballad ‘Four Day Muse’ before a rolling banjo and rousing war-march percussion launch into ‘The Book Woman’s Daughter’ as Friedman leaves her virtuosic vocals to one side to scream out a challenge to those who would oppose free, universal education. Police sirens accompany Meena Ysanne’s delicate strings over which Friedman delivers a powerful, emotional vocal performance in ‘Friday Night Depression’, and the mood stays sombre as the album concludes with a New Orleans street funeral march dedicated to a family friend (‘The Mayor of North Hollywood Park’).
“Chimes after Midnight” sets rock and blues against orchestral strings, disturbing banjo riffs, opera, and jazz, and it all comes together to make poetic sense in Friedman’s capable hands with her crystal-clear vocals and laser-like precision in storytelling.
