Ruston Kelly

The full-length debut from singer/songwriter Ruston Kelly, Dying Star is a document of self-destruction and salvation. With a storytelling sensibility that constantly shifts from candid to poetic, the Nashville-based artist details his experience with addiction, which included time in rehab and an overdose in early 2016. Rooted in a delicately sculpted sound that shows every nuance of his vocal delivery, Dying Star quietly captures all the chaos and heartbreak on the way to finding redemption. Kelly’s debut for Rounder Records, Dying Star follows his acclaimed EP Halloween—a 2017 release produced by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, First Aid Kit, Jenny Lewis) and praised by Rolling Stone (who described Kelly as a “scruffier-voiced Ryan Adams obsessed with both Merle and the Misfits”). Kelly co-produced Dying Star with Jarrad K (a songwriter/producer who’s previously worked with Kate Nash and Weezer), enlisting local musicians like singer/songwriter Natalie Hemby and Joy Williams of the Civil Wars to bring the album’s gracefully melodic, guitar-driven arrangements to life. And while Dying Star has its share of sonic flourishes—the elegant electronic effects, the all-female background vocals provided by singers like Kelly’s sister, Abby Sevigny, and his wife, singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves—each track centers on Kelly’s soul-baring lyrics. Despite the lucid self-examination at the heart of the album, Dying Star was conceptualized while Kelly’s life was still in total disarray. “I’d been making a lot of poor choices, using substances to alleviate the sense of something being wrong with me upstairs,” he says. “I decided I was going to quit doing all that, and the moment I made that decision I had this epiphany: I was going to make a record called Dying Star, and the last song would be called ‘Brightly Burst into the Air.’” Opening with the wistful reflection of “Cover My Tracks,” Dying Star finds Kelly shaping his narrative with equal parts singer/songwriter confessionalism and punk-rock irreverence. Songs like “Blackout” telegraph unbearable despair, while “Mercury” makes rock-bottom desperation feel anthemic and “Faceplant” recounts Kelly’s transgressions in a tongue-in-cheek sing-song (“Took too many pills again/Blacked out for a week/Didn’t eat, didn’t sleep/Came to, did it all again”). Elsewhere on the album, his lyrics drift from moments of sweetly twisted humor (“Feels like a curse ’cause the drugs don’t work/So I bought a statue of Jesus,” on “Paratrooper’s Battlecry”) to hopeless romanticism (“I’m gonna write a book and put your name on every page,” on “Mockingbird”) to the sharing of hard-won wisdom (“Learn how to die for something/So you don’t live your life for nothing,” on “Jericho”). And on the slow-burning title track to Dying Star, Kelly offers up a heavy-hearted but hopeful meditation on the possibility in rebirth.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of artist