“A patient and richly textured collection of songs that hum with a quiet dream-like energy.” That’s how we described 2021’s The Fawn by Minneapolis artist Greta Ruth. “Each track is a composition of poetry and tone,” we wrote, “which slowly unfurls to reveal layers of depth and meaning.” The sound comprised not merely of quiet folk-influenced beauty, but a darker side too. What we called “a funereal elegance that ties together death and life and love like a ribbon.”
It should come as no surprise then that Greta Ruth’s latest offering strays more towards the strange. A double single titled Milk Tooth/Hull, it comprises of two songs that began life as potential vocal interludes for more conventional songs, before taking on a life and distinctive flavour of their own. Both are constructed entirely of layered vocals, many of which were improvised during recording. “Following cycles of breath, layers of voices work through stagnant, wavering, or melodic patterns,” Ruth describes, “while others feature simple, direct lyrical imagery of pain, loss, and letting go.”
Both tracks are mixed and mastered versions of what were initially intended to be demos, a decision made to preserve the spontaneity and strangely significant imperfections of the original recordings. On ‘Milk Tooth’, the background vocals take on a tonal quality that rings like a bell, while the lead delivers wavering repeated lines that explore how even life’s most consequential events are one day consigned to memory.
It’s just a memory now
I can take it in my hands
and turn it round
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‘Hull’ has similar thematic depth despite its sparse lyrical content, aching with an injured sense of catharsis. It’s a song in which violence is implicit, existing in the tender aftermath of some terrible occurrence. “I’m coming home with the same body on my bones,” Ruth sings, “bruised from things I can’t recall / you’d think I would have known what hurt me so but I am all alone here.”
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Milk Tooth/Hull is out now and available from the Greta Ruth Bandcamp page.