Kayla Kelly
Just listen to this on repeat. Smooth transitions for the soul and lyrics that will turn you into goo. Everything Hala creates is magic and these songs reflect the time and passion put into them.
Favorite track: Turn Out Right.
Hala (pronounced haw-luh) is the performance moniker of Detroit-based musician Ian Ruhala. Ruhala’s music is at once precise and playful, skipping breezily between decades and their attendant musical aesthetics while executing them with care and sincerity. This eclectic work is the product of one mind. On previous releases—2015’s Young Alumni and 2016’s Spoonfed—Ruhala worked almost exclusively on his own, writing and recording every instrument on his records in attics and bedrooms across Detroit. On his studio debut Red Herring, Ruhala elevates this formula, applying his genre-agnostic blueprint to a set of songs that comprise a no-concept concept record: a varied LP which explores the tragedy and comedy—often, both at once—that color and confound the modern 22-year-old’s existence.
“For me, this record represents the moments in life where there is a sense of confusion to whether we’re living in a comedy or a tragedy,” says Ruhala. “Sometimes these feelings intermingle with each other.”
To execute his wide-lens vision, Ruhala worked with producer Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Vance Joy, Ra Ra Riot) at his legendary secluded Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington. Over a few months in late 2019, Ruhala and Hadlock sifted through a stockpile of prepared demos and assembled the 12 songs that comprise Red Herring. Apart from strings—played respectively by Andrew Joslyn and longtime Brandi Carlile collaborator Josh Neumann—Ruhala wrote and performed each instrument on the record, including guitar, piano, bass, drums, baritone ukulele, xylophone, vibraphone, and all vocals.
Ruhala’s singular operating style is a credit to Red Herring’s simultaneous idiosyncrasy and unity: each track bears the earmarks of his tendencies for saccharine melodies, clear instrumentation, and a sort of ethereal, out-of-time placelessness—and yet each could also be from a different artist. Opener “Turn Out Right” is a late-night indie throb, with leading keys and Ruhala’s gentle tenor probing for answers: “Running on just like this sentence is/Trying to find the meaning in this.” “Camera” is a swaying country stomp with Marc Bolan vocals and Kinks swagger, while “Why Do You Want Anything To Do With Me?” hums with the neon hyperness of mid-aughts alt-pop. “Making Me Nervous” is a polished pop R&B gem, as if Britney Spears collaborated with the likes of Jerry Paper. All of these are vastly different pieces of a record that believes in liberation from genre essentialism: “I’m a songwriter,” says Ruhala. “I want to make timeless music.”
These are the sounds of Ruhala engaging with and indulging his various influences. “The bass player in me wants to be equal parts funk and jazz, but is also inspired by Richard Hell,” he explains.” “The guitar player in me wants to be like Stray Cats’ Brian Setzer, and like The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr., and Nick Valensi. There’s something to take away from any playing style.”
Singles “Emotional R&B” and “Somehow” showcase this infatuation with kaleidoscopic tonalities and narrative double-entendres. “Emotional R&B” is a slow-dance of vibraphone, strings, and guitar over Ruhala’s slurred romancing: “Emotional R&B’s got me singing all these words to you,” he coos. He describes the song as “an interpretation of romantic comedy movie tropes.” “I never thought I was gonna be the guy I see in the movies: the smooth talker with a glass of red wine glued to his hand,” he says.
That tongue-in-cheek lack of self-seriousness is twisted on “Somehow,” a guitar-forward indie rocker with a scorching solo. It details Ruhala’s West Side Story-ish desperation to love someone, despite having hardly a dime to his name. “I’ll give you the key to this town/Although my money is in the bank, I want to love her somehow,” he belts. The song was informed by Ruhala’s turbulent college days in Michigan, spending his last remaining $10 on a pan of pot brownies. “I was broke, I was about to drop out, things were not looking up for me,” he chuckles. “But I still wanted to be close with somebody, somehow.”
Red Herring is a coming-of-age record from an artist recognizing that cohesiveness need not only be expressed in structural sameness. It can and should be found in other experiences, in the complex, poignant, life-and-death fleetingness of a three-and-a-half-minute pop song. Or better yet, 12 of them back-to-back.
credits
released May 1, 2020
All songs written by Ian Ruhala
Produced and Mixed by Ryan Hadlock at Bear Creek Studo
Co-produced by Ian Ruhala
Recorded by Ryan Hadlock, Taylor Carroll, and Ian Ruhala
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Assistant Engineering by Ayosgivaleria and Michael Rodio
String Arrangements by Andrew Joslyn, Ian Ruhala, and Ryan Hadlock
On "Making Me Nervous", "Camera", and "Emotional R&B"
Violin, Viola by Andrew Joslyn
Cello by Josh Neumann
Some sounds aren't broken and don't need fixing. Hurry have tapped into a rich vein of songwriting here replete with multi-barbed hooks everywhere you look, classic melodies I feel I've known for years before this record. The phrase 'instant classic' is overused - just not here. jasonchebib
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