The press materials for Ruth Garbus’ striking new album, Profound, compare the record to the sounds of both experimental jazz guitarist Wendy Eisenberg and the acclaimed vocal trio the Roches. Those are fitting comparisons; Profound has a distinctly jazzy feel, and embraces unique harmonies and arrangements. The result is a style that can’t be easily defined but is deeply enjoyable for its mysterious nature and ability to straddle genres.
Garbus is based in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she recorded the album with Nick Bisceglia on guitar and Elie McAfee-Hahn on keyboards. Compared to her first two records, Kleinmeister (2019) and Alive People (2023), Garbus appears to be in a better place, with experience resulting in a more self-assured album. The warmth of the accompanying instrumentation gives Garbus’ compositions the rich texture they deserve. The 44-year-old Garbus described Profound as being largely about “what it means to be a woman in her 40s”.
Garbus also has a way with gently shocking the listener right off the bat, with the first track, “I Think I’m Ready Now”, beginning with the following lines: “When I penetrated that man I felt just like a dog / Getting fucked is the season of the world / My life springs forth into the jewel of creation / The arched back of the imagination.” Garbus has described the song as “about being a ripe fruit, I guess.” But the implied references to sexuality and childbirth certainly bring the song into much deeper dimensions (things get even more straightforward with the line “I continued moving slowly down the corridor / As relaxed as a woman can be when she’s filled with blood”).
Garbus leans into the instrumentation’s intimate surroundings, touching on abstract jazz modes and neoclassical elements. The peaceful pace of the ballad “The Lost Soul” is suddenly and gleefully interrupted by a bracing, pitch-bending synth solo. As an avid scholar of the works of French Romantic composer Gabriel Faure, Garbus includes intimate arrangements of two of Faure’s compositions, “Clair de Lune” and “Nocturne.”
While Profound includes plenty of deep moments of contemplation as well as nods to centuries-old composers, Garbus isn’t above adding plenty of sunnier, more pop-oriented angles to the record. “Sunny Summer Guy” and “Tip of the Hat to Yellow Fleur” are luxuriously paced tropical pop nuggets that see Garbus in a bright, positive mood; partly the result of beginning life-changing medication for depression and anxiety. The former track describes the unfettered joy of a pinwheel-hatted beachgoer: “Put on my hat and grabbed the sunscreen bottle / Hugged all the trees on the way to my Honda,” while the latter is an upbeat ode to her longtime partner, fellow songwriter Chris Weisman. “Is there a way to prove that love is real?” She sings. “Lab coats and microscopes say yes.”
Elsewhere, there are gauzy, lo-fi pop soundscapes in songs like the warm, buzzing “Nothing and Everything” and the futuristic torch song stylings of “All E-Lone”, as well as odd set pieces like the beautifully abstract “500”. On the album’s closer, however, Garbus is direct as ever: “Tall Face”, like the record’s opening track, addresses the female form and the prejudice and judgment surrounding it, describing “my superior extra-large, canines incisors and molars divine / And luxurious wrinkles wind like a vine / Around my tall face.” What’s so striking about Ruth Garbus and her latest record is how it is so wondrous and revelatory in its maturity and self-acceptance, yet still finds endless ways to be musically adventurous, and yes, profound.