A Quick Chat with Ruby Gill
Congratulations on your new album Some Kind Of Control – can you talk us through the themes you explore on the album and what you approached differently this time, compared to your debut I’m gonna die with this frown on my face?
Thank you! This is always such a big question – like asking “how were the last few years?” haha. But I guess the job of writing a record is making a record of time periods. So these songs are a reflection of the strengthening and loosening up I did since Frown. That album had so much angst in it – I was angry (as per title) and craving a childhood I didn’t quite feel like I’d had. It was a record of loss: of people and spaces and a joyfulness that I was grieving. I was exploring desperation and bitterness and being hard on myself.
In many ways this record is the opposite. It is about giving myself the permission to feel joy, and love, and pleasure in full. It has so much more gain in it. I was writing about agency and finding silly joy in realising I have control (as per title) over my life and body and desire and opinions. This is a record of acceptance, and I approached it with that goal in mind: to fully confront and welcome all the parts of me and my life that I’d maybe been disappointed by in the past. And use that acceptance to place myself in the world as a more powerful, cheekier energy that feels love and feist. And anger of course – but it’s more well-placed.
What was influencing you while creating the album? Music or otherwise...
I was mostly listening to my friends. Both their music and their general, often voice-noted guidance. We were all living under lockdown and writing songs over the phone to each other, pacing around our living rooms talking about the world and the frogmouth outside the veranda, and the physical ailment and the crush and the curse.
There is a line in To what do I owe my pleasure that explains it better:
“No one’s going to fix it / not your hips and not your lipstick / you’re going to have to learn to listen to your friends / and write…”
Most of those friends ended up singing on this record with me, which is really special: Hannah Cameron, Hannah McKittrick, Angie McMahon, Annie-Rose Maloney, Jess Ellwood and Olivia Hally.
What was the creative process like for Some Kind Of Control, from writing through to recording? Was there anything you were trying to achieve specifically?
I made most of these songs alone, and with every song I tried to write with a different mind altogether, using many weird and unlocking prompts and lessons given by other songwriters I admire – Luke Temple, Courtney Marie Andrews, Phil Elverum, Hand Habits, Buck Meek. Of course, all these songs ended up sounding exactly like me, which I suppose was inevitable, but I wouldn’t have got there without welcoming outside influence this time around.
I did some crazy stuff – like never resolving a single chord in the title track, or recording myself speaking out loud for an hour as the basis for Space Love, or putting my own lyrics through Google translate 16 times and seeing what came out the other end to rework with.
What do you think makes a great album?
A lot of one-liners that stay with you. Reality in the gaps (we left in all the birdsong from the recording). A feeling of pulling a wall down with every song. And a sense of time and place.
When you’re not working on music, what else do you do with your time?
I work a bit in science communication, I obsess a lot over recipe books, medical dramas, forests and very good books, and I am about to live full-time in my tour ute (in a rooftop tent). So I currently spend a lot of time researching the perfect step ladder.
We heard you are an avid bird-watcher! Can you tell us a bit about how you got into this, and whether you think it has an impact on your creative output?
I have always noticed birds, and then as an awkward young adult I didn’t like clubbing so I woke up at 5am and tried to name every bird in my nearest nature reserve as a way to pass the time. I got a bit hooked because it felt like I was painting a map of my life and everywhere I’d been and walked by simply recording the birds I’d seen that day.
I guess that is a similar practice to songwriting, and it certainly influenced me in terms of making me feel more connected to something bigger than my own brain and its spiralling. My songs are always better when they are written with a context – with a specific tree and a morning and a witnessing at the core.
Who are some local artists we should check out?
Annie-Rose Maloney! She’s ridiculous.
What will celebrating the album release look like for you?
I would like to try find a moment to listen to the record in my headphones in full and give it an hour of my honouring before I stop listening to it for a while haha. Otherwise I am playing an instore at Soundmerch and probably having an overwhelmed cry over my lunch while my girlfriend tries to decipher why this time haha.
You also have a bunch of upcoming shows to launch the album – the Kissing The People I Want To tour – what can we expect from a Ruby Gill gig in 2025?
More poems, more surprise choirs and a lot of sitting down. It makes me feel more powerful. Otherwise all the usual tears, looking at ourselves in the full and falling in love with the person next to you.
Ruby Gill – 2025 Australian Tour
Fri 11 Apr – Bridge Hotel – Dja Dja Wurrung Land/Castlemaine, VIC
Sat 12 Apr – Old Stone Hall – Pallanganmiddang Land/Beechworth, VIC
Thur 17 Apr – Northcote Social Club – Naarm/Melbourne, VIC SOLD OUT
Wed 30 Apr – Smith’s Alternative – Ngambri/Canberra, ACT
Fri 2 May – Railway Hall – Dharawal Land/Thirroul, NSW
Tue 6 May – VENUE TBC – Gadigal Land/Sydney, NSW
TICKETS: rubygill.me/tour
