Ruston Kelly – The Weakness (2023) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

Ruston Kelly – The Weakness (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:52 minutes | 494 MB | Genre: Alt. Country, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rounder

Pushing forward with the intensely self-aware truth-telling he’s always brought to his music, Ruston Kelly immersed himself in the making of The Weakness: a blisteringly honest, but profoundly hopeful album that reveals our potential to create strength and beauty from painful experiences. “I hope this music helps people become the hero of their own lives by understanding their own weaknesses, and I hope it helps them to see that tragedy doesn’t have to be the period at the end of the sentence.”Since its 2021 release, Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed has been deemed a divorce-record classic. Now, we get to hear the other side of the story—and some of the songs are even better than hers. Musgraves’ ex-husband, Ruston Kelly, may not be as famous but the singer-songwriter is poised to make a mark with his third album, done in a lyrically laid-bare, sonically layered emo-Americana style that suits him well. (Kudos to producer Nate Mercereau, who brought along the anti-trend creativity he’s applied when working with Leon Bridges and Maggie Rogers.) The shimmeringly produced and catchy “Hellfire” is a particular standout, ready to be embraced by broken hearts everywhere. “If hellfire’s screaming like a sin/ Through the healing/ What’s the feeling that you get/ When you’re dying?” Kelly sings. It’s at once Band of Horses earthy and kissed with Martika-esque ’80s synth, and it sounds great. So does the title track opener, which builds to a dramatic bridge, Kelly’s voice not exactly cracking so much as striving to reach for some higher place: “Just let it go and it all will end.” When he wails, “Fuck that guy he’s just a piece of shit,” it’s unclear if he means himself or Musgraves’ new love, and it cuts so well both ways that it doesn’t even matter. There are moments of cataloging the wounds (the almost spiritual meditation of “Cold Black Mile”) and tracking what caused it all, on the swooning “Let Only Love Remain.” Kissed by mellotron and the spirit of Kris Kristofferson at his sad-bastard best, that track is stark and otherworldly and rough and tender all at once. There’s a run of songs that have the mid-to-late ’90s feel of rootsy alt bands like Counting Crows (the excellent “St. Jupiter”) and Better Than Ezra (“Breakdown,” “Holy Shit”) and also make you realize that, in the wake of Zach Bryan, there’s a real place for that. Kelly, a recovering addict, finds liberation in the funny-ha-ha “Michael Keaton”—”It’s 3:35 in the morning/ And I thought/ CBD would not get me high/ But here I am/ Thinking what if Michael Keaton/ killed himself in Multiplicity/ Would that be genocide?”—and the idea that it’s better to be alone than to have to talk to someone else about your breakup. “I didn’t want to make a divorce record, but it was important to say what I needed to say while also making sure to protect her heart,” Kelly said. Thank goodness he gave in. – Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist:

1-01. Ruston Kelly – The Weakness (03:27)
1-02. Ruston Kelly – Hellfire (04:02)
1-03. Ruston Kelly – St. Jupiter (02:21)
1-04. Ruston Kelly – Let Only Love Remain (03:50)
1-05. Ruston Kelly – Michael Keaton (03:19)
1-06. Ruston Kelly – Mending Song (03:49)
1-07. Ruston Kelly – Dive (02:15)
1-08. Ruston Kelly – Breakdown (03:03)
1-09. Ruston Kelly – Holy Shit (03:27)
1-10. Ruston Kelly – Better Now (03:07)
1-11. Ruston Kelly – Wicked Hands (04:36)
1-12. Ruston Kelly – Cold Black Mile (03:30)

Download:

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