Ruby & Rose
And Ruby had always been the louder one, the showoff, the one who’d go out to parties, dance the night away and somehow never lose composure. Ruby looked great under bright coloured lights, or under dim lights, and her hair was shiny, and so was her smile. She was all bark and all bite, always in the eye of the centre of attention, holding it around her like a halo. She looked good in a haze. She had the kind of figure that catches your eye when it passes by in a blur, always favoured by movement. Oh, how good movement made her feel!
Rose? She was always just sort of there. Actually, scratch that, Rose was always there. Intensely there. If she was sitting down, she felt the very oscillation of the chair, should one leg be bigger than the other three. The smell of the room trapped her in, the scattering of light across the walls held her eyes captive. She might never have been a real talker, but for every word she didn’t say, she’d think a paragraph. An eternal oscillator between the library and the garden, bouncing between those, her figure always under layers and layers of skirts, jackets, hats and gloves. It was like seeing a ghost.
And they were lonely. Both of them. In opposite directions, yes, but they were both lonely.
When one met the other, it was like things finally made sense.
This album was recorded in 2023, and I did everything on it myself, on my very own, from the writing to the final master. The vocals were recorded last during a month-long break from work and college, and most instrumentals were recorded at the late hour of the night, after my daily activities. The only thing that someone else made for it was the cover, drawn up by the beloved and very talented Mary Monk, of Manchester, England. Her artwork captures so many details of the lyrics that I notice something new each time I take a look. Ruby & Rose is holding a playing card – probably taken straight from Alice’s Apartment, where the two hands meeting underneath will go once they’re held – and is wearing a watch, waiting for the third minute. The clouds cover the sky you will step on, with a star crossed sun hidden by the rain – so why the crying? The garden of roses is peaceful, but fire comes from below, fire that will sanctify. The Fool watches on, yet to be caught, his cigarette lit behind Ruby’s ear. It is truly a masterwork that I carry with immense pride on the cover of Ruby & Rose’s first breath of creativity.
Originally, I wanted a respite from the intense, extreme metal music I was working on at the time to play some chill, acoustic music. I had dozens of songs available for the project from many years of songwriting, and I took some from every corner that I had. Breaking Wheel had been born earlier in the year, for a psycho-emo group with the working title of Cereal Killers that never took real shape. Step on the Sky and Alice’s Apartment were leftovers from a 2022 project that also included at least two songs that ended up on Dreaming of Roses. A Few More Tomorrows had been written sometime around November of 2020. She Ain’t Been Well dates back to 2017; Third Minute Personality to at least 2015. The first demo to Starcrossed is from 2018, but some form of it had existed since 2013 or so.
There were three songs I wrote during – or very close to – the recording process, when everything was already in place: Medeia, Catching Fools and Wonderful Boy. Those are the ones that reflect my then-current state of mind the most.
