At the recommendation of my editor, I start listening to new Emma Ruth Rundle album These Killing Times at the bus stop, breathing in the first cool air I’ve felt outside in a week. I’ve just spent the weekend choking on the dust of autumn leaves in oppressive heat and being squeezed by the pressure of always-impending storms. I’m chugging sparkling water from a can, necessitated by a boil advisory necessitated by one of the aforementioned storms knocking out power to the local water treatment plant over the weekend. I’m on my way to one of the three paid jobs I’m working in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the student loan debt I’ve managed to gather during my graduate program. We’re under a flood advisory, just to keep things exciting. I listen, in other words, amid the mundanities of dystopia.

These Killing Times was made for such an experiential framework. Over its eight tracks, Rundle grieves, her rage tempered by the protracted nature of the apocalypse into bitter sorrow and somber contemplation.

That’s not to say this is an album about giving up: quite the contrary. These Killing Times sees Rundle determined to press forward in whatever way is possible. She has no faith in those in power. She believes instead in resistance through persistence. Grim? Triumphant? Rundle blurs the line between them in the bridge of pointed opening track “Powerless”: “Let me die here with a hammer in my hand / One for smashing, one for making something better.” In dire times, perhaps the only good construction is borne of destruction.

Musically, this is a slow-burning work. There is a tension to Rundle’s voice that gives even her sweetest melodies an edge, building bridges between acoustic piano and guitar and sludgy plugged-in instruments. Hers is a solemn trudge toward the unknown, and one with few moments of true release. This is an album about sustaining. We live in a time of increasingly dire narratives. Why make music? Because we might as well share just a little catharsis on the way to the end of the world. Emma Ruth Rundle invites us to do just that on These Killing Times.

9/10

About the Author’s Biases:

Adriane went to the same high school as Claude co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei. She hates hot weather. Go Cardinals, I guess?