Multi-instrumentalist more eaze (artist mari rubio) has shared the gorgeously arranged, quietly adventurous avant-pop single “healing attempt” from her new album sentence structure in the country, out Mar. 20th. The piece imbues a gentle pulsing song with washes of lush instrumentation and unpredictable textural flourishes, rubio’s resolute message and acrobatic harmonies adorned with strings, guitar, banjo and stuttering electronics. The instrumentation mirror’s the track’s emphasis on coping with longterm pain in one’s everyday life. Rubio elaborates:
“This piece has a lot of the core messaging and meaning of the record. It’s about the juxtaposition of going throughout your day, living through life’s mundanities while there’s all these looming traumatic things in the background of your life that you’re subtly carrying behind you. It’s just there in the background until it’s right in front of you.
“‘healing attempt’ was a song I wrote while I was falling in love with Wendy [Eisenberg], so I wanted them to sing on it. It’s a song about falling in love and having good things happen, but there’s still this pit of trauma inside of you. And that creates a kind of tension even when you’re feeling good and relieved. I was taking things I do genuinely love like Scritti Politti or High Llamas or The Sea and Cake and using those influences in a way I feel like I really haven’t allowed myself the permission to express before. Being with Wendy kind of helped me realize “oh I can do this and I love this music,” and it’s sort of a duet for that reason.”
more eaze will be playing a double-album release show in support of sentence structure in the country alongside Wendy Eisenberg in NYC at TV Eye on April 15th.
Sentence structure in the country is an acknowledgement of the vernacular that shaped rubio’s musical production. As Coltrane said, “It all has to do with it.” rubio grew up playing fiddle in traditional folk and country tunes, and while sentence structure in the country playing is entirely different, her reverence for the evolution of folk forms and her playing remain imbued with those experiences. Informing her production choices were rubio’s well-chosen collaborators: Wendy Eisenberg on electric guitar, piano and voice, Henry Earnest on electric guitar, Alice Gerlach on cello, Jade Guterman on acoustic guitar, and Ryan Sawyer on drums.
The pieces equally took new shapes based on rubio’s own evolutions, her perspectives altered by a cross-country move and work or relationship changes. New perspectives personally or musically proved fertile ground for creative evaluations. rubio’s reflections on the work evoke the personal: “It’s hard to reckon with the big changes in the moment and so it takes a lot of reflection and working through that after the fact” and the musical: “I couldn’t let go of the heart of the material and what it was trying to tell me. Playing with these different combos helped me determine what the very core elements of the pieces were and then the songs also took on a life of their own this way. It’s like a feedback loop: as we continue to perform them, there’s this precedent that is set with what the piece could be.”
