Countless tours and album campaigns may have been derailed over the past year, but the pandemic has certainly carved new space into many musicians’ schedules to revisit past recordings, write new material and experiment with collaborations. One such collaboration arrives today, courtesy of Wieuca and Ruby the RabbitFoot. The brooding new synth-pop track, “Another Faded Image,” tells the story of a narrator whose car breaks down at night. Believing they see the face of a former lover up ahead, they begin walking toward her image as the world around them begins to crumble. With glimmers of harmonized hope, it’s the sort of doomed love song that warns of the self-destruction and loneliness that often arrives after revisiting the memory of someone.
“Ruby’s been on our radar for a long time, but I don’t think we’ve ever met in person,” says Will Ingram, Wieuca’s singer and guitarist. “Ruby’s sound has evolved radically over the years, and I think ours has too, so I suspected she was open-minded enough to try a project together. I just sent a cold call email which led to us getting on the phone and geeking about the Athens scene, Blink-182, Third Eye Blind, Sum 41, etc. It was an immediately fun and low-pressure process.”
Pop musician and visual artist Ruby Kendrick now resides in Nashville, though she got her start in the Athens music scene and maintains a connection through Normaltown Records, the local imprint label of New West Records. Wieuca, meanwhile, is currently split between Georgia and Louisiana.
“Will and I have been in southwest Louisiana for almost six months now,” says bandmate Jack Webster. “We’re working as general contractors doing residential construction for people affected by hurricanes Laura and Delta. There’s still a lot of destruction down there, and Lake Charles has not received very much attention from the media surrounding that. When you stack that with the pandemic, you get a lot of people whose lives are really tough right now. That said, the people we’ve met through our work are very generous with what they have. You can’t help but admire their resilience.”
“It’s been wild,” adds Ingram. “It can be isolating being unplugged from your friends and your own music scene in a new area, so we’ve been productive recording and shooting files back and forth between Georgia and Louisiana with our boys and collaborators.”
Below, listen to the new collaborative track, “Another Faded Image.”
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
