After her debut album Pith [KLP239], released on K, Emily Beanblossom of Ruby Fray spent the next two years touring the U.S., selling her handmade soaps and working on the bare bones of her next album to be released this fall: Grackle. Coming a long way from her debut album, Pith, Ruby Fray’s upcoming release Grackle blends Americana sweetness with sludgy dissonance. Emily and long time collaborator Nick Botka, teamedup with Pith producder, Ben Hargett, to record the album at Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, WA. Their newest recording preserves the playful jangly genre-bouncing enervation found in their previous workwhile insisting on a more disciplined approach to songwriting. The album opens with a slow synthesizer prelude “You Should Go”, setting the tone for listless anthems characterized by Beanblossom’s harmonies and hollers. “Vespers”, a morning prayer, introduces a coy letter to a wayward sailor in “Photograph”. Then, with a sharp twist of a post-modern dance beat paired with the tremolo of a Finnish lap harp, “Barbara” takes the stage to insert bitter anecdotes, and “Anthony” invokes a dark spaghetti western composition supporting Gregorian vocal harmonies. “It’s Mine”, with its trip-hop drum and bass vehemence, finishes into a chaotic degradation of off-kilter cello chords. With musical muscle from a handful of established Austin musicians, such as punk musician Corey Anderson of Ghetto Ghouls, folk singer Julia Lucille, and Danny Metcalf and Danielle Rose Moran of noise rock band SUR, Ruby Fray will be hitting the road to tour in support of Grackle upon it’s release date of September 29th.