Martin Ruby

Martin Ruby is an alt.folk band led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Marco North. Laying his demons bare, North pulls on characters like a series of strange coats. Paring back the extraneous, coaxing out the wry details, always seeking that conversational tone, his songs are a wandering collection of midnight confessions. His first album, Heaven Get Behind Me was written on a 100-year-old parlor guitar, and recorded in a Soviet-era living room on a collection of vintage instruments. North’s unique songwriting is steeped in not only the melancholy grace of Nick Drake and Mark Linkous, but also the foggy noir of Johnny Cash’s American albums, and the somber meditativeness of Nick Cave’s most recent recorded output. A second album, Jacob and the Angel is atmospheric music with a capital “A”. Be it the slack-string resonator on the heartbreaking standout track ‘In the Field”, the haunting 124-year-old banjola on ‘Sisyphus’*, the hushed parlor guitar on ‘Windowsill’, the sleight-of-hand 12 string Gibson on ‘Rare Air’, the harmonica, saxophone, cloud chamber bowls and the rest – there is a private world we inhabit on this album, and a town tucked inside every song.