An elegant grasp of beauty and a mysterious rapture of living in and out of love, Ry X third LP, ‘Blood Moon’Ry is a graceful descent into the waking caverns of our hearts. The Australian-born singer isolated himself in the forested mountains of Topanga, finding solitude to carry the fiery themes of his subconscious into a body of work that encapsulates more than just a love song.

What possesses us in love is nameless, what we approach and how we disentangle is a synthesis of more than mere desire. It is a testimony of all that we have been, felt, known. What we wear in love is a myriad of mirrors pointing us home. In fragile sovereignty and brutality beyond the point of belief, X’s voice transcends into a brittle prayer slider, a sweet ease of helpless longing. We are there in its paralysis of discovering what we long for when we do not yet know the way our heart speaks to us.

Starting out subtle, soft, with a cadence of surrender, ‘Let You Go’ is an easy heartbreak that keeps us going throughout. With a melodic buzzing beat that pulses past the echoing reverberation of X’s voice in this celestial vortex of feeling the way we dissolve in and out of love.

“Does anyone really know
Where do they go when they die?
You are the one I want so close
You’re the one I can’t deny”

It’s both brave and tender, an ode to the ways we never know, but somehow, in that unknowing, we defend a space of belief in the way we’re in love. Atmospheric reverb is set against guitar interludes that delve deeper into self-discovery. Sonically, this track, and the entire album for that matter, does a brilliant job of setting us up for defeat. We are put in the cacophony of the philosophizing of X, it is both sobering and unifying. In this way we meet the very human need and desire to love and be loved.

“Your Love” takes us to a point of majesty in a soulful expansive ballad that reflects the dissolving battle between love and time. A marriage of hope and tragedy in the poignant lyrics dare to accept how the edges of love brutally lengthen and tear us apart.

The overall composition of the album shows a greater attunement of feelings with Ry X’s isolation providing shelter in a beautiful way. “Come Back” opens brilliantly with airy horns swinging to meet rich, deeply embodied piano chords that lift and hold us in the quiver of all our hearts do and don’t know. This track is constructed in a way that echoes the renewal of love, echoing minimal synthesized notes buzzing together to offer a kind of peace to tender hearts.

“Blood Moon” is a brutally beautiful examination of how love shapes and grips all that we are. Ry X’s music is that of ritual, of prayer, a way of posing, of examining, of releasing, of renewing. His songs are a home to hold the pieces of heartbreak, a way to breathe and rectify the delicate nature of love. At the end of this album, we sat in a speech that, in its entirety, is a magnificent rapture of what it is to be and to be together. At the end of this album, we remember, once again, how we are like love.

8/10

Words: Rae Niwa

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