Ruby Boots' New Record Will Help You Destroy Self-Doubt

If you were hoping that Ruby Boots—born Bex Chilcott—was going to keep making the same kind of country record as her 2016 breakthrough Solitude, the first thing you’d notice about her new album Don’t Talk About It is not that. It starts with a smash—heavy electric lead guitar, bleached-out vocals, classic rock rhythm guitars—it ends with “Don’t Give a Damn,” a honky tonk hit reminiscent of Madman Across the Water-era Elton John and the Rolling Stones’ oft-repeated advice that you can’t always get what you want. The second thing you’ll notice is that, buried beneath the Nikki Lane meets early Yeah Yeah Yeahs vibe that permeates the record, is Chilcott has laid out a ten-track reclamation of herself.

Chilcott, who was born and raised in Australia, has been recording and releasing music professionally since she put out a self-titled EP in 2011. In 2015 she signed with Universal Music Australia, released Solitude, then moved to the United States and signed to Bloodshot Records, who is releasing Don’t Talk About It on February 9, in 2017.

“There’s so much more defiance [on this record], and I’ve harnessed my resilience that I was forced to learn at such a young age,” she says over the phone. (she was kicked out of her mother’s house when she was 13 and became independent at age 16). “I’m aware of it now. Coming into your 30s, I think you really start to understand what those things mean.” Those things, for Chilcott, include sobriety, which has allowed her to embrace her emotions and the radical power that feeling can have.

“You become aware of how you should be talking to yourself instead of how you do talk to yourself,” Chilcott says. “You become aware of whether you should be caring about what people think or whether you should be caring about being the best person you can be or aware of any kind of self-doubt that’s really probably all made up in your head. Eventually you start realizing that your reality is everything you think it up to be.”

Whatever her reality is, it seems like a good one. “Believe in Heaven,” contains a raucous guitar part which sounds something the White Stripes might have released in the early 00s, and celebrates the record’s theme of letting go of the past and embracing the future. The soulful, bare-boned “I Am a Woman”—a rumination that comes off a bit like an earnest, folky Lana Del Rey song—takes the oft-travelled path of comparing women to things like rivers and horizons and becomes the focal point of the record’s second half and emphasizes how Chilcott has harnessed that resilience. The record’s closer, “Infatuation,” is a song laced with a lively organ that takes to task a person who feels entitled to her time because they were nice to her. Pro tip: Don’t do that.

Boots worked with both Nikki Lane (a close friend of hers) and Beau Bedford (of the Texas Gentlemen) on this record to create a sound that honestly hits the nail on the head in terms of what modern country and Americana audiences are searching for in today’s releases. You can stream the record below, ahead of its release tomorrow, Feb 9.

Correction: This post has been updated to clarify that Chilcott is still signed to Universal Australia. She also signed to Bloodshot in 2017.