album review: 'the weakness' by ruston kelly

The frustrating thing about defining Ruston Kelly ‘in context’ is that, to some, he’s a secondary player.

Now I don’t buy that, and if my reviews and year-end placements of Dying Star and Shape & Destroy haven’t proved anything about how Ruston Kelly is a unique figure within his crux point of genre, I’m not sure what will. I also realize that both albums have a profound emotional resonance for me because they hit at times unlike few others… but the fact they both still work so damn well away from those moments and with those memories steadily fading is a testament to their power. I reviewed Dying Star in the midst of burnout at the tail-end of 2018, and there’s very few albums that felt so right in the moment of bottoming out and slowly finding a way to crawl forward. Shape & Destroy fell in the first year of pandemic, and there’s something about its painful journey to try and stay healthy - now being in the clear, it’s the moment to keep rolling forwards and being comfortable with what he can be - that felt like a balm, even if you knew that tragedy was just around the corner.

And that’s the thing: Shape & Destroy, despite how some characterized it, was not a breakup or divorce album - even though it had been released just after his separation from Kacey Musgraves, it had clearly been recorded in better times, and while that shadow leant the album a quiet tragedy, to me it never overtook the album, an impression all the more cemented by seeing Ruston Kelly live in 2021. But that’s the thing: Kacey Musgraves is more famous and acclaimed than Ruston Kelly, and in the aftermath of the divorce she put out an album in 2021 with star-crossed… and while I appreciate the writing more than most which felt honest to their complicated separation, the pop pivot in sound didn’t really work as well as I think she intended, especially coming after Golden Hour; to me, Kelly was out of her shadow, but that wasn’t true for a lot of folks, and that raised a big risk that whatever project our emo country singer-songwriter would deliver would necessarily touch on that subject and be framed as ‘the other side of the story’. That’s not really how I saw it - by Dying Star I found him a force in his own right even if Kacey’s voice flitted across the albums, he had his own introspective story to tell that felt independent of hers, one reason I loved the collab song ‘Headspace’ he did with Charli Adams so much that year - but it did create this sinking feel of pain and dread that I knew was coming, especially on an album called The Weakness. It was going to be a hard listen for more reasons than one, beyond my own circumstance… but it’s also been one of my most anticipated albums of 2023, even with the lead-off singles leaving me with a lot of production questions, even more than with Shape & Destroy. But now we’re here: can we get into The Weakness?

Well, I think we can… and it’s fascinating to place this project in context of the first two. Dying Star was hitting rock bottom and digging oneself out, Shape & Destroy was learning how to live with newfound healing and focus… and The Weakness is now the harrowing test that health will face in the wake of external challenges that threaten the very foundations in which it was built. This comes with a change in focus - the album feels bigger, broader and more scattered, the nerves are more rattled, the production is measurably rougher, and it’s probably Ruston Kelly’s most immediate record to date; I agree with him that it’s not really a divorce album so much as one where the divorce happened alongside other events that pushed him to his limit, the flipside to Shape & Destroy’s measured, incredibly even pace and tone where it almost runs together. The Weakness absolutely doesn’t, and it’s easily Ruston Kelly’s messiest album to date, although likely his most accessible given how many steps he’s taken away from country… and yet the third time’s the charm, it still works, and I’d be hard-pressed to not call this one of the best of 2023.

But I want to dig into what doesn’t work first, and it really comes down to two factors. The first is a few points of Ruston Kelly’s delivery - he’s an insanely expressive and raw singer and that depth of feeling allows him to nail the loudest and softest moments on the album, from the crushing holler of the title track and ‘Michael Keaton’ to the soft-spoken crooning of ‘Let Only Love Remain’, ‘Mending Song’ and ‘Cold Black Mile’, albeit with a lot more reverb across the board to amplify the choral harmonies. I was hesitant about this choice early on but like with The National I’ve warmed to it - it creates the feel of a great weight crushing down on him, amplifying the haunted loneliness of coming back from the brink and still trudging forward, and it’s not a persistent element of all the production and mixing here. What I like less is his falsetto - it’s reedy, it’s thin, there’s a filmy brittleness to when it comes up on the hooks of ‘Breakdown’ or especially ‘Better Now’ that doesn’t have that same power; that effervescence has been something Kelly has been approaching since the beginning and it feels very reminiscent of more synthetic indie folk… and this is where I have to talk about production, handled this time by Nate Mercereau, a pretty major shift from Jarrad Kritzstein. Credit where it’s due, there’s a breadth of tone and experimental flair that allows Ruston Kelly to dabble in more genres and stick the landing, especially those more fluttery folk moments… but the atmosphere doesn’t always stick. I liked the muted chiming and rattling acoustics of ‘Hellfire’ that became even more washed out on ‘Dive’, but then you have the gauzy synths that hit a distinctly ‘off’ frequency on ‘St. Jupiter’, especially against the sharper jangle of the guitars.

And that is something I think can be a mixed blessing with Mercereau’s production: the album feels more immediate, the biggest moments feel bigger, the emotional contrast stretches over a broader spectrum, and for as much as the textures can feel washed out, a lot of songs still really pop in a way where the country tones on his first two records needed more time to sink in. They felt more introspective, you needed more time to sink into the vibes, where if you had to brood and let the music wash over you, they were more than happy to oblige - it led Dying Star to feel a bit long and Shape & Destroy feel a bit uniform, but they were astoundingly effective. I’d say that Mercereau’s production leads to a more ‘song-focued’ experience, especially as the whiplash sequencing takes a bit of getting used to, but it also connects way more quickly. The stoicism on the brink of the title track, the borderline pop punk acoustic rattle of ‘Breakdown’ and ‘Holy Shit’ that sounds like something that could have dropped in the early 2000s - the latter with a punch-up from John Feldmann, the pealing melody of ‘Wicked Hands’, to the haunted organs of ‘Cold Black Mile’ that just wrecks me every time. And then there’s ‘Michael Keaton’ - I actually had a patron ask for a song review of just this, and I see why: it’s one of Ruston Kelly’s best ever songs for hitting that perfect dirt emo balance with the faster low-end groove, choppy rollick, and utterly idiosyncratic sing-a-long hook that rolls across heartbreak, stoned out humour, and utter exasperation, one of my favourite songs I’ve heard all damn year!

In fact, let’s get to the lyrics, and again: this isn’t really a divorce album so much as one where a divorce happened… and where despite his tangible angst and pain at the memories, where you can tell he’s very much still going through it, Ruston Kelly is going to keep charging forward; Shape & Destroy laid a foundation, and it’s going to be tested, but hold firm. And the test starts from the very beginning: the title track and ‘Hellfire’ show just how easy it’d be to give up, and succumb, and slide back into his vices. He holds firm, for now, and then you get the moments where he rummages through what self-pity and the failed relationship look like with a lot of heartbreaking, realistic detail - and what I love, once again, is the framing: Kelly spoke in interviews about how he wanted to write the songs where he could find honour in them twenty years later, not write slander or expose the mess, and with ‘Let Only Love Remain’ and ‘St. Jupiter’ there’s more of a focus on time’s passage where he cherishes the best memories but lets the seasons change and the flowers die, all the more amplified with the autobiographical ballad ‘Mending Song’ where the road to healing is going to be long and painful but the foundation is holding true. But this is also why ‘Michael Keaton’ is quintessential to holding the album together - yeah, getting high with a stupid Multiplicity reference is ridiculous, but it’s the deflection from mounting irritation from a manipulative mess who’s trauma-dumping and he’s ready to burn it all down; he’s self-aware enough to puncture his own angst with some perspective, a bold choice but one where I’d argue he sticks the landing.

And from there… it’s about living? ‘Dive’ has him opening up to real vulnerability with a new partner, ‘Breakdown’ is… well, true to the word but it comes from overworking to avoid getting into his emotions, self-destructive tendencies that strike the revelation of ‘Holy Shit’, with the key line that he’s either shooting the bullseye… or is trying to miss, implying he knows what he has to do to get better. And that’s true, he’s done the work before, he’s got to do it again… and by the final third of the album, it’s the hollowed out relief of reaching that vulnerable place and even while he backslides, he knows he’s doing it and can take the steps to get better, no matter how hard and lonely they are. ‘Wicked Hands’ is a great song not just because of the Sufjan Stevens reference to ‘Death With Dignity’ where Kelly questions what all of this is worth in the end in a wry crisis of faith, but also what happens when you try to change for a partner to be better but that’s not who you are and you wind up on the cusp of being self-destructive again - it highlights the messy reality of therapy that a lot of this you have to do for yourself, not at the expense of other people and relationships but that they will be made better by you knowing yourself more. And that’s why ‘Cold Black Mile’ is such a devastating song: it’s lonely, knowing yourself, knowing your damage, knowing so much wrecked in your wake where you might not get clarity or closure… but you’ve weathered it all, and you can see dawn on that road ahead.

Folks, I dunno how much more I can add with this one - it seems like Ruston Kelly albums come along when I need them, and while I won’t say they’re better than therapy or that this is by any means perfect, it’s therapeutic in the hard way, of having to get into that rough territory and do the work, and Kelly’s had to go through more than most in getting there. Simply by how well it balances external and internal pressures I’d say it’s his most accessible to date - tough to gauge whether it’s better than his first two, given how uneven of a listen it can feel I’m not sure how well it’ll persist or grow on me throughout the year. But at least for now, it’s one of the best - if there’s anything that this album proves it’s that Ruston Kelly, on his own, is a force to be reckoned with; please check this out, folks, it’s something special.