The gothic folk artist’s addiction issues began at 12 and lasted for more than 20 years, exacerbated by a rock’n’roll marriage. Now single and sober, clarity fills her starkly beautiful new album
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In both life and art, Emma Ruth Rundle has been running. For the past 15 years, the Los Angeles-born musician has gone from project to project, living nomadically while she played guitar in post-rock bands before branching out into a gothic folk solo career. Now, though, with her fourth solo album Engine of Hell, she seems to have come to a stop.
Rundle sings and plays piano on eight devastatingly intimate songs that confront her drug and alcohol addiction – everything is exposed. “As I age, I’m realising the true value of what I have to offer as an artist is the ugliness of things,” she says.