Weakness, Etc Ruston Kelly

• 1The Watcher03:28
• 2Belly Of The Beast03:48
• 3Heaven Made The Darkness03:24
• 4Cold Black Mile (Hotel Version)03:35
• 5Mending Song (Piano Version)04:11
• 6Nothing Out There03:35
• 7The Wreckage05:49
• Total Runtime27:50

Info for Weakness, Etc

Der in South Carolina geborene Kelly hat mit seinem letztjährigen Album "The Weakness" und der dazugehörigen EP "Weakness Etc", die diese Woche erschienen ist, einen Doppelschlag der Verletzlichkeit gelandet. Hier baut er einen einzigartigen Kanon auf, indem er frühere, vom Country geprägte Alben in einen weitläufigeren Pop-Sound mit breit angelegten Anliegen und intimen Farben verwandelt.

Und Kelly verwendet die Sprache der Schwäche wie nur wenige Popstars: Er benennt seine Fehler, lebt entlang von Bruchlinien, während er Begriffe wie Stärke und Selbstakzeptanz neu aufbaut und neu definiert.

Im Zuge dieser Projekte hat Kelly den Preis der Verletzlichkeit gesehen und damit gerechnet, sagt er. Er versteht, warum andere Künstler Angst haben könnten, ihre Zelte auf wackligerem Boden aufzuschlagen.

"Aber ich habe auch etwas sehr Großes über mich selbst zu mir selbst gesagt, über Dinge, an denen ich ständig versuche zu arbeiten", sagte Kelly über seine letzten Alben.

"Es gibt diese kleinen Bereiche, diese kleinen Risse in mir selbst, die ich zu flicken versuche, wie wir alle es tun. Aber ich habe es in dieser ausdrucksstarken, dauerhaften Form gemacht, von der ich nicht wirklich wegkommen kann. ... Es hat mir geholfen, ständig an mir selbst zu arbeiten und mich durch Schwäche auszudrücken, aber das ist eine Form der Heilung und ich werde dadurch stärker."

"Weakness Etc." stellt ein paar Songs des Schwesteralbums neu zusammen. Hier bleibt "Cold Black Mile" warm und atmosphärisch, schlägt aber einen akustischeren Weg ein und bildet eine Art verbogene, nicht gebrochene Soulmusik; eine neue Version von "Mending Song" nutzt den Geist eines klagenden Klaviers und schiebt Kellys Stimme nach vorne an einen Ort direkt hinter deinem Ohr.

Bevor Kelly mit der Arbeit an seinem dritten Album begann, zog er aus seinem Haus in Nashville aus und in einen alten viktorianischen Bungalow in der Kleinstadt Portland in Tennessee. Dort verbrachte er monatelang in bewusster Einsamkeit, um eine Reihe von lebensverändernden Veränderungen zu verarbeiten, die er im vergangenen Jahr durchgemacht hatte, darunter eine sehr öffentliche Scheidung sowie große Umwälzungen in seiner unmittelbaren Familie.

"Ich hatte das Bedürfnis, mich selbst besser zu verstehen und das wahre Fundament meiner Person wiederzuentdecken", sagt Kelly, der auf seinem 2018 erschienenen Debütalbum Dying Star offen über seinen Kampf mit der Drogensucht berichtet hat. Indem er die selbstbewusste Wahrheitsfindung, die er schon immer in seine Musik einfließen ließ, weiter vorantreibt, vertiefte sich Kelly schon bald in die Arbeit an The Weakness, und das Ergebnis ist ein unglaublich ehrliches, aber zutiefst hoffnungsvolles Album, das letztlich unser enormes Potenzial offenbart, aus den schmerzhaftesten Erfahrungen Kraft und Schönheit zu schöpfen.

Ruston Kelly

Ruston Kelly
Kelly’s debut for Rounder Records, Dying Star follows his acclaimed EP Halloween—a 2017 release produced by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, First Aid Kit, Jenny Lewis) and praised by Rolling Stone (who described Kelly as a “scruffier-voiced Ryan Adams obsessed with both Merle and the Misfits”). Kelly co-produced Dying Star with Jarrad K (a songwriter/producer who’s previously worked with Kate Nash and Weezer), enlisting local musicians like singer/songwriter Natalie Hemby and Joy Williams of the Civil Wars to bring the album’s gracefully melodic, guitar-driven arrangements to life. And while Dying Star has its share of sonic flourishes—the elegant electronic effects, the all-female background vocals provided by singers like Kelly’s sister, Abby Sevigny, and his wife, singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves—each track centers on Kelly’s soul-baring lyrics.

“When stars die, it’s one of the most galactically powerful things that can happen in the universe, it’s one of the most beautiful things you could ever witness, and it also gives life to new stars—so basically that death is essential. To me that all connects back to how I knew I needed to change, and I needed to see that change as a promising thing.” (Ruston Kelly)

Born in South Carolina, Kelly started playing guitar under the guidance of his dad, Tim “TK” Kelly, a pedal-steel guitarist who now performs in his band. “When I was a kid my dad would play steel guitar to help me to get to sleep, so that’s the first instrument I’ve got any recollection of,” he says. Since his father worked for a paper mill and frequently changed job locations, Kelly grew up moving nearly every two years, living everywhere from Alabama to Belgium. But it was during a stint on his own in Michigan—where he went to train with an Olympic coaching team in hopes of furthering his figure-skating career—that he made his first attempt at songwriting. “The family I was living with were contractually obligated to provide me with food, rides to school and the rink, money for miscellaneous things I needed—but they didn’t do any of that,” says Kelly, who was then 14. To soothe his homesickness, Kelly holed up in his room with the Jackson Browne album and guitar his dad had passed off to him before he’d left for Michigan. “I didn’t know this then, but when I was little my dad would sneak cigarettes by taking me out for a drive,” he says. “He’d just smoke and play an entire Jackson Browne album while we drove all around the neighborhood, so when I put on For Everyman in Michigan, I felt like I was home.”

Although Kelly first dabbled in songwriting in Michigan, it wasn’t until his family moved to Brussels his senior year of high school that he began to find his voice as an artist. “Moving to Belgium completely destroyed my sense of cultural placement,” he says. “It’s populated by so many different types of people, and it gave me this new understanding of all the possibilities there are in terms of what you can do with your life.” While in Belgium, Kelly also discovered the music of the Carter Family, which turned out to be another milestone in his growth as a songwriter. “Before then I didn’t know much about Johnny Cash, other than that he was a fucking thug,” he says. “I ended up going all the way back to the Carter Family, and becoming so mesmerized by the way Mother Maybelle played guitar. Being enchanted by that music ended up changing my life.”

At 17, Kelly left Belgium and took off for Nashville to live with his sister, but had no firm intentions of launching a music career. “I had no idea what I was going to do in Nashville, but I knew it was going to be different from how everyone else had done it,” he says. “Everything kind of started out of necessity—like, ‘I need to pay rent, how am I gonna do that? Well, I’m pretty good at writing songs, so I guess I should get a publishing deal.’” That deal arrived several years later, in 2013, when Kelly signed with BMG Nashville. Along with penning songs for artists like Tim McGraw and Josh Abbott Band, he continued working on his own material, releasing Halloween in April 2017.

This album contains no booklet.