I had meant to ring Ruthie to speak about her music but 30 seconds in, we're getting bang into literature instead. Virginia Woolf, to be specific, and Ruthie's observation that Woolf constantly used food in her work. “The way she writes about women and cooking… it can be a great thing that brings people together, but it can also be difficult for women, in that their lives are making food,” she says. “Even now, we kind of gender food.” My mind swings to a piece published in Hazlitt three years ago, where Jess Zimmerman writes about how a woman’s appetite is not supposed to exist. I make a mental note to email it over. I feel like we could speak about this subject all day.
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The reason we’re chatting, though, about this is because Ruthie – real name Naomi Baguley – is currently doing an MA in English Literature at Leeds, where she's lived for six years. It makes sense. The three tracks she’s put out so far, “What Kind of Woman”, “Spirit Now Moves” and as of today, “Land Of My Lover” wouldn’t sound out of place in a poetry anthology. Her lyrics, too, are awash with imagery and visual metaphors. In the latter track, premiering below, she sings: “Like winter sunshine, I am cold, deep inside / But I am bright, I am bright,” over sweet, 70s-style piano chords, her voice almost wavering, her melodies full and languid.It’s a far cry from the music she was releasing before, as the front person of DIY grunge-punk four-piece Bruising (we actually premiered one of their tracks in 2016). Back then, it was all about thick, melancholic riffs and thrashing pop choruses. Her voice sounds just as syrupy sweet in Bruising, but it gets buried between propulsive chords. As Ruthie (which she works on with her ex-Bruising bandmate Ben), her words are given space to breathe. You can hear each word and subtle shift in tone, as if she’s properly absorbing her own sentiment, and ensuring the listener does too.But anyway, after chatting about Virginia Woolf for quite some time, we did manage to get onto other subjects. Here's everything I learned about Ruthie:“I was studying there. I took a history course about Riot Grrrl and an art history course about American art. I lived in the far West of Berlin, I didn't live in the cool bit. But we were one train ride away from a huge lake, and me and my best mate used to go to that lake every day. At the time, I was in a long distance relationship, so it was nice to have my friend there with me.”“When I was a kid I was a Beatles fangirl, decades too late. I was obsessed with them, and thought I was going to marry Paul McCartney. I still am obsessed. I also love Dolly Parton and country music. So I feel like I have an intersection of those swirling out somewhere.”“I never wanted Ruthie to be a retro project, I didn't want to do the whole 'beehive, winged eyeliner, I'm someone from the 60s and all this music sounds like it'. There's a lot of good music like that coming out, but I didn't necessarily want that. I wanted it to be influenced by that era of classic songwriting, but also sound like it was made by a 23-year-old in 2019. I think that's a hard line to walk because I love the late 60s and 70s, but I'm not going around wearing bell bottoms.”
SHE LIVED IN BERLIN FOR A YEAR
SHE’S OBSESSED WITH THE BEATLES…
…BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN SHE'S 100% RETRO
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