Ruby Gill brings together the emotion of Joanna Sternberg and the humour of Randy Newman to create her unique take on piano balladry. Charming and arresting in equal parts, her recent album, I’m gonna die with this frown on my face, tackles the most trivial of topics – Champion Ruby is about her attraction to people who smoke cigarettes – and the most troubling, her adopted home-country (Gill originates from South Africa) Australia’s border security policies. I’m gonna die with this frown on my face houses her most mindful observations – Ruby is a keen birdwatcher – and her most acute, ultimately it results in unearthing one of the most endearing songwriters you’re likely to hear in sometime.

Ruby joined us to discuss the influences behind her debut full length in today’s Sound and Vision:

Three albums you love:

Mimi Gilbert – Grew inside the water 

When I first heard Mimi’s voice i felt like the whole world had ceased its manic turning for a second and peace had come to all. Then I heard the lyrics and the wild swells of this album’s production, and fell in love with music as a concept from start to finish. Mimi’s explorations of mothers, of religion, of queer joy and sheer nature are immense. I come back to it always.

Bongeziwe Mabandla – Mangaliso 

Mangaliso means ‘miracle’ in Xhosa and i feel like that is what this album is. There is actually nothing like its ability to make me dance and cry at the same time. It takes me home to South Africa, it takes me inwards to my heart and body, it takes me on whatever wild journey of a melody and rhythm Bongeziwe’s writing chooses each song. It’s perfect in every physical and spiritual way.

Leif Vollebek – Twin Solitude 

Would you like to feel again? Would you like to know language and its lilts again? Would you like to hear every part of a room and community coming together to make music? This is my car album, the one i’ll turn to when all else feels like noise. It never fails me, with its winding stories, incredible rhymes and the hits of a piano at all the right times.

A film you love:

Once 

I’ve ironically watched it over 40 times. But it’s the first film that I ever felt was true and real and made me want to make music. It especially made me want to make music in small studios with a wild community and then play that music in cars on the way to the beach and be done with it all. I feel like it’s the bubble of when music feels good, before the industrial machine takes over. I particularly love the friendship arc inside it, and the swearing, and the camcorder. You know what I mean.

A book you love:

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

I recently read The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, mostly while sobbing in the bath. It is a balm for immigrants everywhere, a deep and complex celebration of trees and their strange sentiency, a wild introspection into inter-generational trauma and also the sweetest ode to coming of age, to queer love, to fathers and figs. It has centred me in my understanding of roots and migration and opened my eyes in so many ways to nature, and the Cypriot/Greek/Turkish diaspora, and food. It will stay with me forever.

PS. some highly commended: Any poetry book by Ada Limon. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. And This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga, which is written in the second person. Incredible.

A song you couldn’t live without:

No Reptiles by Everything Everything 

Maybe a strange choice i know but god, it really gets me going.