Newcastle indie-folk singer-songwriter Ruth Lyon announces her debut album Poems & Non-Fiction, out June 13 on Pink Lane Records. Out now is new single ‘Books’, the second taste of the album following the previously released single ‘Wickerman’.
Weaving deeply evocative narratives and potent meditations, with an artistry that balances delicacy and strength, Poems & Non-Fiction is a major waymark for Ruth Lyon. Forged by her experiences as a disabled woman and a life-long sense of otherness, she explores the beautiful mess of existence, challenges social norms and ignites a journey towards self-acceptance, empowerment and perhaps most importantly, hope. “I have surprised myself with the raw honesty in these songs and I hope these stories inspire healing and growth,” Ruth says.
Working with acclaimed producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding) and influenced by artists like Adrienne Lenker, Fiona Apple and Moondog, the songs are rich with poetic nuance and the unconventional insight of a young life lived to capacity—a mesmerising blend of analogue and angular indie-folk that gives as much attention to silence as sound, with understated yet muscular grooves. Shimmering between the abstract, the archetypal and the naked truth, meaning lingers just beneath the surface, daring listeners to both reach out and dig deep; to give emotion a solid, tangible shape.
New single ‘Books’ is released today alongside a video directed by Sel Maclean. Stop-start strings, plucked and bowed make holes in the texture like a typewriter on paper, weaving in and out of driving piano, bedded by lazy rhythm falling away and returning, all glued together with vocal calls to the echo of a page. Lyon turns a cosmic reckoning on herself “Weigh me today and weigh me in again tomorrow / rocks in my socks, balloons tied round my elbows” that perhaps can be heard as a plea to the fates, wedded with Lyon’s typical Dali-esque imagery.
Speaking more on the release of ‘Books’, Ruth said: “I was imagining my life as series of poems and non-fiction (which life really is, if you think about it) that at times has felt unreadable, overwhelming, impenetrable, senseless, unreal – a collection that I’ll never have time to read. I filmed the video in my house – it’s my safe place, somewhere I can inhabit my inner life, somewhere I feel free to imagine and write, rather than read, my own story.”
Poems & Non-Fiction:
- Artist
- Wickerman
- Books
- Perfect
- Hill
- Confetti
- Caesar
- November
- Cover
- Weather
- Seasons
