STACK #221 March 2023

MUSIC FEATURE

visit jbhifi.com.au/stack

TO RUEL THEM ALL Having spent three years sifting his favourite films, friends' experiences, and eventually his own personal ordeals for songwriting juice, London-born and Sydney-residing pop prince RUEL is releasing his debut album.We spoke to the ARIA winner about 4thWall . Words Zoë Radas INTERVIEW

fodder],” he explains. “As I wrote more songs, I got better at becoming more personal – but not giving too much away. I like to get really deep into myself, but I don’t always want to sound too specific.”

4th Wall by Ruel is out now via Sony.

“It’s hard to create beauty out of it… because a lot of the time, it’s not that interesting if you just say it how it is,” he says of honing his craft. “It’s finding different ways of saying it, finding imagery.” That's not to say that movies, and the unique ways they move us, don't feature here. The album announcement of 4th Wall introduced fans to the Truman Show -esque universe Ruel has envisioned for the album; it’s a little like the idea of an IRL first-person video game, where whatever we can’t see over the fence,

R uel: he loves Laneway, just like you! “It always has the best line-up,” the 20-year-old grins. “It’s always so stacked with the artists I love.” This year, those artists (included in Ruel's disarmingly relatable crowd-shot Instagram stories) were Phoebe Bridgers, Fontaines DC, Julia Jacklin, and slowthai. And Ruel’s happy to be a punter. But as the burgeoning torch-bearer of emotive Gen-Z pop – having had his first demo passed to producer M-Phazes at age 12, toured the world, released three EPs, won an ARIA and collected legions of devoted fans – he’s also noticing the spritzes of stagecraft (a lighting design here, a mic manoeuvre there). “Oh, for sure I’m doing that,” he laughs. “It’s so bad. It kind of ruins it for me. I’ll [say to a mate], ‘Oh, it’s a bit of a hard room to mix, this one, isn’t it?’ and they’re like, ‘What are you talking about?’ It is definitely annoying how you start looking at all those things, thinking about it. But [then] I went into the moshpit, and just got rowdy.” The story strikes apt, as the kaleidoscopic experience of simply being young was the focus of 2021 ARIA-nominated single Growing Up Is ____ ; the track appears on Ruel’s debut album 4th Wall , out this month, amongst material which immediately hits as more alive and imaginative than the catchy, but ultimately less mature, material he's released. The writing of 4th Wall was spread out

Jim Carrey in The Truman Show (1998), the concept of which inspired 4th Wall 's visuals

or behind a closed door, simply hasn’t loaded yet. But why have we all done this – why have we all imagined we’re being watched or tricked in this way? “’Cos everyone thinks they’re more important than they are!” Ruel cackles. “I do! 'It

Photo credit: Michelle Grace Hunder

over the last three years, and Ruel reveals over that time he’s learned how to express himself more freely. “When I started, I was wanting to write about movies, and taking other people’s experiences [as songwriting

must be all about me,' right...?" ZKR

Continue reading the full article online at jbhifi.com.au/stack

o

m

n

t

NBA team the Miami Heat performing the Harlem Shake dance trend in 2013, after a 12-game winning streak

s

In 2013, Baauer’s Harlem Shake topped the charts in all five weeks of March, fuelled by a massive video dance trend. The time it took for Harlem Shake to hit one billion views on YouTube (40 days) was half the time Psy’s Gangnam Style spent fanging towards the same milestone the year before. Baauer

h

i

Y 10

h

T

O

E

G

A

A

R

S

MARCH 2023

jbhifi.com.au

8