{"id":31809,"date":"2020-03-16T10:40:20","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T14:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=31809"},"modified":"2020-03-13T15:01:52","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T19:01:52","slug":"review-lauren-ruth-ward-burns-hot-on-vol-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/review-lauren-ruth-ward-burns-hot-on-vol-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Lauren Ruth Ward Burns Hot on Vol. II"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_31810\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-31810\" style=\"width: 1184px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-31810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/laurenruthward-carlyvalentine-e1584125009243.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1184\" height=\"666\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-31810\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo Credit: Carly Valentine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Lauren Ruth Ward spits fire. She always has. Her vocal lashes are cut from a Janis Joplin cloth, and her configurations are nearly as gutsy, raw, and unruly. Ward\u2019s second album, <em>Vol. II<\/em>, is a real soul-shocker of a collection \u2500 she douses musical gasoline all over the place, lights a match, and lets it all go up in flames. The trail she blazes is personal, hyper-political, and indebted to queer womanhood.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"https:\/\/laurenruthwardmusic.com\/\">who the fuck is Lauren Ruth Ward<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s a reckless rabble-rouser who scavenges humanity\u2019s stunning misery and collects the damages as trinkets. Her work to-date \u2500 including 2016\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/0E403A9AmdRLuIx99iJ8oW?si=SDKz9xzzTaST62Ytx-7aXQ\">self-titled EP<\/a> and 2018\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/3xDKwcVKB8ReEIJFBp3hZL?si=T99UDEeYRlCLroP67ryaUw\"><em>Well, Hell<\/em><\/a> \u2500 shoots from the hip with an Annie Oakley precision, a western drawn that makes her tough as nails and seemingly unconquerable.<\/p>\n<p>A Los Angeles transplant, by way of Baltimore, Ward smacks away any conventions and all expectations. Her 2018 release led to signing with Weekday Records, under the Sony umbrella, but when the indie label folded in late 2018, she was left with three songs in her arsenal, among them her punky \u201cValhalla\u201d opener. It\u2019s a bespeckled setpiece that strains past traumas out of her bone marrow. \u201cI ate shit on the walk of fame,\u201d she chews and spits onto hardened rock chords.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/album\/4iiCxZyzxmFyS36FkybtaD\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Her endurance as a storyteller shows up in delightful and bright spades, and she transports the listener into a purgatory filtered through an enlightened state of being. \u201cMost times, I feel like a bat out of hell \/ They refer to me as a firecracker \/ I\u2019m living in my personal hell \/ I don\u2019t need your ammunition,\u201d she splits her tongue with \u201cWater Sign.\u201d She doesn\u2019t need your pity or senseless descriptors; rather, she welcomes your understanding and empathy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReal Life for the Most Part\u201d spills from her lips as a psych-rock wonderland, and her vocal, blissfully hypnotic and savage, sparkles as one of her crown jewels. She snapshots our inescapably catastrophic existence: \u201cDon&#8217;t blame me, I&#8217;m a bastard \/ Baby-Boomer plastic \/ You know I&#8217;ve never asked for this \/ To be born so tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ward swerves unexpectedly with back-to-back campfire confessionals. \u201cFriendly Fire\u201d crackles with glowing embers, eventually dying out, and \u201cGoddess\u201d worms through the greying charcoal and ash to rediscover life. \u201cA true shine like when Vali speaks her mind \/ You&#8217;re the goddess in my shrine, divine,\u201d she whispers on the latter, a striking work of beauty. Drums pitter-patter in fanciful routines, and when the song cracks open, her voice slowly rising into the heavens, there remains an earthy, mystical quality.<\/p>\n<p>With <em>Vol. II<\/em>, Ward ropes together a superstar lineup of collaborators. She penned every poison-laced lyric, and musician Eduardo Riviera composed and arranged the guitar parts. Together, they co-produced the entire record, alongside producing contributions from David Davis, Claire Morison, Andrew Martin, Matt Linesch. You\u2019d expected the many hands in the pot to result in an uneven, drastically varied collection, but that is simply not the case. The album feels whole, and each part grinds as cogs in a machine, pushing forward to a common creative goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMust Be Nice\u201d is Ward\u2019s artistic pinnacle here, an apt closer to leave the listener in absolute awe. Her fangs are newly-sharpened, and she chomps hard on an epic takedown of the patriarchy. Clocking in just under five minutes, she sums up the annoyance, the rage, and the hurt that stems from straight white men giving little concern for anyone else outside of limp platitudes. \u201cMust be nice to be able to choose what is best for me and more importantly what&#8217;s best\u2005for\u2005you,\u201d she sings, aiming her throaty vocal cords right at the serpent\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p>She leans forward even more, and her gaze grows increasingly penetrating with each brimstone stanza. \u201cI said, it must be nice to be assured and calm \/ You walk right into the room \/ Everybody takes a seat in your palm \/ Not me, babe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Everything boils over and leads to this knockout covenant: \u201cFemale is the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lauren Ruth Ward is the voice we need in 2020. <em>Vol. II<\/em> confirms her willingness to confront not only herself but the world \u2500 slicing through archaic beliefs and traditions, past traumas, and the current sociopolitical hellscape to honor the marginalized and bestow upon the most tired her own tremendous strength.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lauren Ruth Ward spits fire. She always has. Her vocal lashes are cut from a Janis Joplin cloth, and her configurations are nearly as gutsy, raw, and unruly. Ward\u2019s second album, Vol. II, is a real soul-shocker of a collection \u2500 she douses musical gasoline all over the place, lights a match, and lets it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":31810,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[42,9858],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/laurenruthward-carlyvalentine-e1584125085345.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31811,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31809\/revisions\/31811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}