Catherine Rudie - The Möbius Kiss (2019)

At the heart of Catherine Rudie’s new record is the idea that the political and the personal can be interwoven, the idea that decisions made in one place by one group of people can have a significant and lasting impact on the lives of another group of people in an entirely different place. Often that impact is negative, but at the same time, it can lead to new openings, creative or personal pathways that were once unavailable. Before she began recording the collection of songs that would eventually become The Möbius Kiss, Rudie’s life went through a period of personal and creative upheaval which she was powerless to do anything about. The land on which she had her home and studio was sold off to developers, the buildings were destroyed, and expensive flats were built in their place. The thriving artistic community that once existed there was forced to dissipate and Rudie’s own way of working was altered irrevocably. Around the same time, her personal life was also thrown off-balance thanks to the ending of a long-term relationship.

It may sound trite but often things have to end before others can begin. Out of Rudie’s seemingly muddled existence, a clear path began to emerge. Her new songs all began pointing in the same direction, and even as the creative networks she once shared with others began to disappear, her own songwriting found a new form and focus. The result is The Möbius Kiss, an album full of the purpose of new beginnings and the freedom of experimentation.

Because, although she is a folk singer, Rudie is at heart an experimentalist. The album takes its title from a drawing – a kind of flow-chart of infinite human desire – by Talking Head David Byrne, himself a great defier of convention, and its songs share some of Byrne’s fiercely exploratory spirit. After a short intro built around Rudie’s wordless vocal refrain (think a kind of hushed snippet of Jane’s miniature masterpiece It’s A Fine Day), the haunting title track gives a first real taste of what the album is about. Rudie’s voice is distinctive – there is more than a hint of her rural Scottish roots, and she uses her breath percussively. And the songwriting is superb. ‘We are a Russian doll of problems,’ she sings at one point, and this song is like a Russian doll too, sound, voice and lyrical image are overlapped and layered in intricate webs. The arrangement is absolutely engrossing. She also has a knack for flitting between references to popular culture and high art. This is most apparent in London Changes. Electronic and organic sounds converge and twist around Rudie’s voice, which is then multitracked as the song draws to its conclusion. It is perhaps the most explicit song about change on the album, but it is also mysterious and full of wonder.

Despite the unified theme of the album, Rudie is able to draw on a remarkable breadth of inspiration and a keen ear for unusual details or viewpoints. The Air Traffic Controller is a case in point: full of breathless, unaccompanied, multilayered vocals, it is inherently strange and beguiling both in subject and execution. She has spoken of the inspiration she draws from the traditional music of her native Scotland, and this song transports those rural singing techniques into the big city. The album is full of such dualities and the weird and wonderful results they can produce. Where the rural comes into contact with the urban, or where the ancient strikes the new, sparks are formed and the whole album is brightened as a result.

Everyday Dangers is another good example. There is a spiky image to begin with – broken bottles on playing fields – and sharpness pervades the whole song, in contrast with the soft sound of acoustic guitar on which it rests. The chorus is telling: ‘We are not in the process of our lives/always able to stay away from sharp knives.’ The delivery is ostensibly sweet, but Rudie’s honeyed diction hides a multitude of scratches and scrapes. The production, which on the first listen might seem minimal, is full of detail and depth.

Harbour Of Grudges describes the insularity of a rural community in the face of the open ocean, while also discussing Rudie’s own romantic predicament. A low-level background drone holds the song together, and when that drops out and leaves just a voice it has the effect of an epiphany. Pale Blue Dot appears at first a comparatively simple song that bears comparison with Vashti Bunyan of Sibylle Baier, but its off-kilter electronics and vivid, surreal lyrics give it an uncanny feel.

The uncanniness continues with Chasing Wasps, which begins with Rudie’s vocal approximation of chiming bells. Again, dualism and contrast play a big part in the lyrics: here it is wasps and honey. The Crown is a long, shifting song that begins with minimal piano. Dust mites and spider bites take the place of wasps. Strange, disquieting images pile up. There are banal, everyday items, bizarre objects, instructions that are impossible to carry out, and the whole thing has a cumulative effect like a series of tiny dreams, each one inside another. Closing track God Of Insects also uses the accumulated image and the repeated phrase to create a quiet lyrical power, a world where there is always acid on the summer breeze.

Listening to The Möbius Kiss is a deliciously unnerving experience. Catherine Rudie’s ability to create vivid moods from often sparse ingredients is a rare gift – she can make you feel as if you inhabit the dream-spaces of these songs, and then return you to the real world with a bump. Often, it is necessary to stop and remind yourself that this is a debut album, such is the quality of these songs and the command that Rudie has over them. She has combined the traditional and the contemporary in a way that feels entirely fresh, and more importantly, she has reminded us that creativity is a constant in a world defined by its fluctuations and vacillations.