Ruth Garbus Readies New Album Profound

A new song from Ruth Garbus, “I Think I’m Ready Now,” is out today, heralding the singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2023 album Alive People. The new LP, Profound, arrives June 12, via Orindal, and features Elie McAfee-Hahn and Nick Bisceglia on keyboards and guitar, respectively. Listen to “I Think I’m Ready Now” below.

Garbus said in a press release, “‘I Think I’m Ready Now’ is a song about being a ripe fruit. I guess. I mean, I wrote it in the same way I write most of my songs, except I was cackling at my audacity a little more than usual. It has a tension, partly because it feels important to me—I don’t know exactly why. I think there is something about expressing myself in here in a certain way, like I almost need to do it too much and it makes me uptight. When me and elie and Nick have worked on it and performed it, I have had to really go through a process with it; I had to let go a lot and just chill the eff out. It was hard. That’s usually how it goes: when I think I need to be forceful, in how I’m singing and/or how I’m approaching the arrangement, it turns out I just need to really back off and that’s when the power comes.”

Recorded at King Tuff’s Vermont home studio, the album includes two translations of Gabriel Fauré compositions, “Clair de Lune” and “Nocturne,” drawn from Garbus’ Brattleboro Music Center training with School of Song and Junko Watanabe. Since Alive People, Garbus has released a debut album with her Earth Flower trio, alongside Philippe Melanson and Sam Gendel. Garbus’ own band has a New York show lined up on May 6, at Cassette in Queens, with support from Dear Nora.