Ruby Gill will probably sound familiar to a few readers out there. After all, she’s been celebrated extensively by the international press (Rolling Stone, NME, The Guardian, and more), alongside gaining two nominations at the Australian Music Prize. Yet, the South Africa-born, Australia-based musician and poet still feels like a precious secret, the sort of artist that has yet to break into mainstream fame. ‘Fishing is not about fishing’ will help her reach a lot of like-minded ears out there. Marking Gill’s latest album, the record also ships with a recently released single and music video, ‘Porchlight’.
From a sonic standpoint, ‘Fishing is not about fishing’ is surprisingly solemn and crepuscular, a slice of unconventional folk goodness that benefits from unrelenting honesty and imaginative storytelling. The aural mood shifts from intimate, stripped-back jewels to fuller band-powered episodes, all sharing extraordinary tenderness and heartwarming melodism. Ruby Gill’s nuanced yet firm vocals crown the record with masterful charm, also sharing controlled playfulness from time to time. Across eleven stunning pieces, listeners are fully welcomed into Gill’s unique artistic universe. It’s a comfortable place, one that we’d urge you to visit.
Delving deeper into the lyrical ethos that propels the album, we are told: “It makes profound the realm of the normal, honouring that to survive in the true crime that is the current world, you must build a life around the most banal, natural things: crushes, prawns, family, driving, self-knowledge and saying I love you in different ways – in order to avoid descending into the existential abyss.” That’s quite a sharp point of view on the banality of everyday life, directly pointing at some hard-hitting existential questions that are too heavy to bear, at least for a lot of us.
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