Chris Rusin Songs From A Secret Room
Chris Rusin just quietly dropped a new album of folk songs Songs From A Secret Room, produced by Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov) and full of scintillating songs with hushed rustic arrangements and dazzlingly, tight raw vocal harmonies. A number of life’s gravest happenstances almost stood in the way of this album making it into the world – threatened loss of Chris’ voice, chemotherapy, working on a relationship, and the general life struggles in the wake of all the above. But in the midst of the events, the gravity of potentially losing his voice shook Chris to his core, into a realization that an album, now, needed to be a front and center priority. And thus, Songs From A Secret Room was brought into the world
Many of the songs are duets with Katie Wise, which gives the album an extra layer of emphasis as her vocals add another character dimension to the songwriting and a depth of quality for the ears.
The song “Cinders” leads off the album, which is full of guitar swirls and a dark foreboding opening into a duet with Katie. This is somber soul searching and it seems there’s no way out: “Heartache becomes living and I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ve cried and I’ve wondered how could I do what I did? too many times I hate the answer.”
Chris’s songwriting gently siphons you into the story he’s telling. For example in “Dark” it’s: “We were blind alone and walking through the night when we collided in a spark.” The cello emulates the darkness here and then Katie Wise’s vocals joining in bring the light – and that’s the perfect feel for what the song is about. In “Flower” the singing and acoustic guitar is lighthearted as the song probes whether or not the euphoria of the relationship will last. “The ground’s drying up and you’re a flower, won’t you come inside. I can’t come inside.” We feel the tension as the voices try to work things out even when they have different ways to focus on life.
The acoustic guitar is soothes in an easy folk style on “Time to Love” as the song’s gentle nostalgia plays out: “I’d lie awake what I was little, staring at the lake out in the middle with the moonlight streaming across the water line.”
Further into the album is the song “Life is Easy” with its richly entwining vocal harmonies and more tension between comfortable and uncomfortable nostalgia “I grew up through the noise of niceness where nobody ever says what they really mean… all that I am is all that I do, all that makes me is how I treat you.”
All through the album there are quality harmonies, open confessional songs about love and wondering how to live and examining the different ways we are brought up, all coming together. Find more details and information here on his website: https://chrisrusin.com/
Musicians on the album are Chris Rusin on music, lyrics, vocals, guitars on all songs, keyboard on #8, and theremin on #10; Katie Wise on vocals on #1,2,7,8,10 and piano on #6,10; John Paul Grigsby on electric bass and upright bass; Russick Smith on cello; Shane Zweygardt on drums; Andrew Berlin on keyboard on #2,5.
The album was produced and engineered by Andrew Berlin, mastered by Jason Livermore, and recorded at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, CO.
