"but the hardest part is an open heart"
Ambition by The Ruralists feels like a garden rock ballad with down home roots and eyes gazing at the road ahead as you relive turns down past roads, some that lead to hurtful places and some that lead to the arms of those who love you. Lead singer / songwriter Luke Hawley wrote Ambition after a prescient fortune cookie that said "Great ambition makes great men" and so it began, "a somewhat philosophical self-reflection about his own ambitions and intentions" resulting in this deeply resonant song.
"Cuz the darkest curse is nothing worse than loosing all your hope"
After sad and reflective words rain down on top of piano keys, guitar, ambling bass and drums, with country twangs, horns take over the melody on the bridge in the form of Calexico style trumpets. Hawley has a great vocal aesthetic for this kind of song, weathered and maybe nursing a stiff drink on the piano. I have reported on some of The Ruralist's big sort of Americana anthems and this feels like the breather but nonetheless as powerful in it's own quiet way.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
We all end up where we end up. And if we're lucky, we find some people to play music with.
The Ruralists are a band born out of necessity, out of picking the best available options in a small town. Nine times out of ten that's pretty bad, the fodder for a short-lived bar band. But this is different.
Luke's songs are different, bringing in the urgency of life lived and yearned for.
The rhythm sections is different. Interpreting and living into not just the beats, but the meaning.
And then all those guitars, telling the story thrice.
Toss in a pipe organ, some random brass, and an occasional electro beat and, well, it's The Ruralists. Everything you didn't know you needed.
Luke Hawley: guitar/vocals
Laremy De Vries: electric guitar
Jake Miller: bass
Titus Landagent: drums
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