Premiere: Ruby Friedman, ‘Journey on a Bullet’ (feat. Gentlemen Alchemists)

Kevin Bronson on May 7th, 2019

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If you consider Ruby Friedman’s body of work as cinema — and with her voice, it’s hard not to — it’d probably be an HBO series. You know, the kind featuring a tormented protagonist with an opaque past on a steely-eyed mission to prevail over demons, including her own.

You could even call it “Journey on a Bullet,” the title of the new single Friedman releases this week. It’s an electro-meets-gospel hymn that both curses and celebrates the Fates, who seem to delight in dragging us through darkness toward the tiniest prick of light. As Friedman, sings, though, “Some flowers only bloom one minute to midnight.”

The song is Friedman’s first since last year’s “Un4GvN,” a collaboration with the production duo Two Beards. This time, the dynamic singer, who released her full-length “Gem” almost three years ago, worked with producers and co-writers Gentlemen Alchemists — John Fryer (Cocteau Twins, Nine Inch Nails, This Mortal Coil) and Colin McGuinness.

The song, Friedman says, is “about standing at the precipice where hope meets despair, making a decision to continue flying blindly shackled to a vision. It is the antithesis of the self-help expression ‘let go or be dragged’ and confronts the artist’s addiction to their art.”

Indeed, it’s the sound of somebody sticking to her guns, because the final episode hasn’t been written yet.

||| Stream: “Journey on a Bullet”