Ruru has finally unveiled her third full-length record.
With her latest release, Glorious Miscellanea, the Filipina singer-songwriter has a lot of stories to tell about emotions, alienation, artificial joy, and pain. While these may sound like sad and dreary topics to sing about, sonically, Ruru's 10-track offering gives big hugs and a hand to hold while frolicking through a field of baby blue nemophilas.
Like a lot of recent releases, Glorious Miscellanea was a product of the pandemic. "I spent the entire 2021 trying to pull the album together," Ruru shares with Bandwagon, adding how some of the songs go back to 2020. "I’m a super impatient person so as soon as I finish making something, I immediately want to share it with the world. This time though, I really wanted to force myself to drop an album."
Bandwagon caught up with Ruru to talk about the stories she wants to tell with Glorious Miscellanea, what she learned from self-help books, the people she collaborated with to make it come to life, and her plans for the next half of the year.
What’s the overall theme or story you want to tell with Glorious Miscellanea?
Glorious Miscellanea is a collection of stories. There's no overarching theme. What you hear is what you get (or make out of it). I didn't have anything exact-o-mundo in mind for the concept, but I did know what I wanted to write.
When I started the record, I tried to force myself to stick to a theme, but I found it extremely limiting and difficult to commit to. What freed me was to channel top-of-my-head ideas and pretend I was somebody else; narrating my life from a third person POV. No thoughts. No pretenses.
Listening back, as a listener and not as the person who creates, I think the album talks about emotional loneliness (something I learned from a self-help book that talks about healing from emotional abuse). An internalized sense of alienation. There's pain in handling relationships and bouts of artificial joy from getting so used to being so detached and alone.
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What was the timeline for your album like?
I spent the entire 2021 trying to pull the album together. Some songs were singles from 2020 that I polished and remastered, while others were entirely new songs I had been working on throughout the year.
I’m a super impatient person so as soon as I finish making something, I immediately want to share it with the world. This time though, I really wanted to force myself to drop an album.
Which song was the most challenging and the easiest to write and work on?
That’s difficult to say because each song had its own unique challenges. There were a lot of songs from this album that lay dormant in my WIP folder for months because I thought there was nothing relevant enough happening in my life to write about (especially since this was during a period of never-ending lockdowns). I spent weeks reading writer’s workshop books trying to focus on what I wanted to say over how I wanted to portray myself.
What makes it most challenging: to be independent—everything is truly the internal battle. In short, none of them were easy. They were all challenging. The flow was often cut short due to a lack of inspiration and would continue after months of doing other normal life stuff.
Who else did you work with on your album and what was it like collaborating with them?
For this project, I had the privilege of working with Polo Reyes (a.k.a Mellow Fellow) for bass and guitar solos, Travis Barce (my bandmate) for drums and bass, Pat Sarabia (of Oh, Flamingo!) for drums, Haniel De Guzman for bass, Emil Dela Rosa for mixing, and Erik Thorsheim for mastering.
I mostly worked with each person from a remote setup where there would involve a back and forth of sending tracks. Other times, especially when I would be working with Polo and Travis, we would meet up at Polo’s studio and spend a day just tracking songs. It’s great because I usually like to work solo for arrangements, but gaining input from other talented individuals certainly boosts a song’s potential.
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What are your plans for the rest of 2022?
I’m super excited to start on new music this year. I just recently moved to Canada so life has been super busy since I started studying again, but I’m really looking forward to creating more music and art!
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