Ruth Moody is a JUNO Award–winning songwriter from Winnipeg, Manitoba and founding member of the internationally renowned, Billboard–charting trio The Wailin’ Jennys. She has performed in sold–out venues around the world, made numerous critically–acclaimed albums, and appeared more than a dozen times on the national radio show A Prairie Home Companion.
These Wilder Things follows her critically–acclaimed CD The Garden, which was nominated for a JUNO Award, a Western Canadian Music Award and three Canadian Folk Music Awards.
Reviews
These Wilder Things, the second solo album by Ruth Moody of the Wailin'
Jennys, is both a piece and apart from her 2010 debut Garden. While her lyric
concerns seem similar on the surface and the music remains rooted in
contemporary folk, this ten-song collection ranges farther and wider. Acoustic
instruments still dominate the landscape–Moody plays many of them–but the
stylistic diversity is a step down the road. She wrote all but one song here, a
playful, acoustically driven cover of Bruce Springsteen's ‘80s hit
“Dancin’ in the Dark,” but her reading of it – sans pulsing keyboards
and desperate masculine voice – makes it fit seamlessly with her songs here:
they all seek connection with something larger, in life, love, and spirit. The
bluegrass gospel in “One Light Shining,” with dobro from Jerry Douglas and
backing vocals by Aiofe O'Donovan, projects that bigger reality inside a small
frame. So does the broken love song “Pockets,” with its minor key, silvery
guitar and backing vocals from Mark Knopfler. This is Moody at her darkest; one
can feel her protagonist's desolation in the grain of her airy soprano, and
Knopfler's grainy baritone comes from the ether. In the role of the absent
lover, he sings in tandem with the narrator across time and space. The title
track features the trace of a Moog by producer David Travers-Smith, but it
merely underscores Moody's piano and determined voice. Her protagonist is
addressing her fear and doubt, and lets them know solemnly that she will move
past them into a wide-open future. Travers-Smith's flügelhorn and e-horns add
a ghostly gospel affirmation in the backdrop. Her bandmates help out with
backing vocals on the sweet country love song “One and Only,” with its slow
chugging guitars. Mike McGoldrick's low whistle and John McCusker's fiddle
provide traditional Celtic flavor to “Life Is Long,” which reinforces its
simple yet profound poetry of passage and return. Closer “Nothin' Without
Love,” finds her on banjo in this aching, jazzy, romantic paean that
juxtaposes economic and emotional poverty; it aches to transcend both.
Moody's gaze on These Wilder Things remains an interior one, but it's more
confident and sophisticated musically and lyrically. The protagonists in these
beautiful songs accept what they encounter; they variously recount their
(mis)adventures to the listener through the vision of a songwriter with open
ears and a wide open heart. – Review by Thom Jurek ~ Allmusic.com