Gena Rose Bruce - Deep Is The Way
Moved by Heaven and Earth
Last year a suffocating black fog pursued Melbourne musician Gena Rose Bruce through the night’s depths – a recurring dream wraith brought on by the passing of her partner’s mother and pandemic instability. But as the inky spectre retreated, she began waking early, when the stars just barely cling to the sky – the first sparks of the strength, self-acceptance and resilience, which came to fruition over the recording of her new album Deep Is the Way.
“I really connected with the idea that stars are the people we’ve lost looking over us,” says Bruce. “You see that there's so much beauty still left. You're awake and you've got this whole day, this whole life ahead of you.”
It’s a memory Bruce channelled into the hopeful, devotional track ‘Morning Stars’, taken from Deep Is the Way – a record of dark introspection punctuated by the brightness of self-acceptance; and startling guitar excursions that articulate the present moment’s roiling emotions. It’s a complex album – devastating, jaunty, heavy and besotted.
Deep Is the Way chronicles Bruce's fraught path back into the light, as she processes death and inner turmoil to emerge with a newfound state of strength and resilience. Following the success of her acclaimed debut Can’t Make You Love Me, Bruce had international touring planned, including stops in the US for SXSW Music Festival, the UK and Japan. But her last stores of adrenaline were running dry as she attempted to balance her career with trips to Israel to support her partner.
Artists are told by the industry to capitalise on momentum both explicitly and implicitly, to keep pushing or risk losing it all. When the pandemic flattened Bruce’s months of preparation, doubts about her future and artistic worth crept in. Her journey into balancing ambition and self-worth shows up on the burning slow-build ‘Future’.
“My passion and drive had actually been a burden and held me back from a lot of other aspects of life,” says Bruce. “You’ve dedicated yourself to something – and then there’s a pandemic and it’s just gone. I took it too far, too hard and kind of destroyed myself.”
She found herself facing Melbourne’s extended lockdown, in a tiny apartment with a grieving partner, and her career in jeopardy – anxieties that bubble over in a whitewater of arpeggiated synthesisers on ‘Misery and Misfortune’.
“I just burnt out completely. When everything stopped, I felt exhausted and completely frustrated,” says Bruce. “It sounds funny to say now, but I felt like I wasn't really good at anything. I didn't like myself as a person, like I needed to have attention, recognition, or praise to make myself feel acceptable.”
She began turning inwards and shutting down around friends and family. Her close relationships felt laboured and her responses in social interactions insincere. She even began questioning her commitment to her partner. On the baroque, Billie Holiday-inspired track, ‘I’m Not Made to Love Only You’ Bruce fantasises about the thrill of new romance with unflinching honesty; and on the album’s dancefloor-ready opening track ‘Foolishly in Love’, that heat feels palpably close.
“I was asking myself: ‘am I meant for one sort of relationship?’,” says Bruce. “I think it's an important question to ask, to really just have a frank conversation about those feelings.”
Housebound, with the claustrophobia of lockdown setting in, Bruce began identifying with characters in the books she was reading, like April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road – an actor whose ambitions are dampened by domesticity. Frustrations that made their way into the aching track ‘Captive’.
“Being out of work made me feel like a 1950s housewife,” says Bruce. “Because music wasn't happening at the time, it felt like my time was over… I couldn't see a way out. I just kind of felt trapped at home. That's what April's like, she's just not made for that kind of suburban housewife existence. She kind of fell into it and let go of all of her dreams.”
Bruce’s journey inward led her to seminal psychoanalytical texts, including Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, in which he continues his exploration of humanity’s self-destructive tendencies. On the doom-laden ‘Destroy Myself’, with its buzzing synths and chugging guitars, Bruce reflects on her own dark compulsions.
“I think what I found fascinating was that he was talking about the fact that people have a need for that sort of behaviour. I have always felt that I drive towards that darkness,” says Bruce. “But it's not a way to live your life and you do need help.”
Deep Is the Way is Bruce’s outlet for those emotions; but writing only gets you part of the way. It’s only through professional help and embracing the strength in her long-term relationship – found on the delicate piano tribute ‘Love’; and on ‘Harsh Light’, with its jagged Crowded House-like guitars and post Paul McCartney swing – that Bruce has found herself back literally on solid ground.
In the absence of touring, she has relished nature’s therapeutic qualities, through her newfound love of gardening, which she’s now studying too. Investing time in life’s cycles of renewal and growth gave Deep Is the Way its name, and the context for its pivotal title track, co-written with iconic songwriter Bill Callahan.
“Sometimes you don't know why plants die, it can be so many things,” says Bruce. “Gardening just feels like going back to simple things. Working with your hands, in dirt and mud, is just a really beautiful feeling.”
Now, Bruce is content in her artistry: happy to dream, and relinquish herself to the whims of time and circumstance, rather than fight the tide. On the Electric Light Orchestra-inspired ‘I’d Rather Be a Dreamer’ she bucks society’s measure of success, instead finding contentment in her own creations and inner-strength, the dirt below and the stars above.
Deep Is the Way is out now via Remote Control Records.