Chris Rusin turns recovery into resonance on New Album “Songs From A Secret Room.”
Every scar keeps time like a metronome; on Chris Rusin’s Songs From A Secret Room, that pulse becomes melody—ten pieces of Indie Folk/Americana rendered with candlelight patience and front-porch candor. The Colorado songwriter, now three years cancer-free, sings as someone who has wrestled silence and won back his voice; adversity isn’t an emblem here, it’s craft material. Indeed, before the full release he’d already stirred a grassroots following, proof that unvarnished truth still finds its listeners. The record feels handcrafted yet aerodynamic: lyrics braided to breath, harmony stacked like timber, arrangements that expand without bluster. You hear the room’s grain and the human margin—the slight intake before a line, the string squeak that refuses to edit itself out—so intimacy reads as design rather than accident.
Produced by Andrew Berlin (the steady hand behind Gregory Alan Isakov) and tracked at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, the album favors luminous restraint. Moreover, Rusin surrounds himself with a subtly stellar cadre—Katie Wise’s piano and harmonies, John Paul Grigsby’s upright and electric bass, Russick Smith’s cello, and Shane Zweygardt’s tastefully economical drums—while pedal steel, dobro, banjo, hammer dulcimer, and even theremin flicker at the edges like fireflies. In fact, the mix treats negative space as an instrument: guitars bloom and recede, percussion arrives like warm weather, and the low end carries not just weight but wisdom. The result is a spare-yet-lush topography that keeps the lyric legible even when the band swells.
The track “Cinders (Ft. Katies Wise)” opens as a confession at dusk—a rootsy braid of banjo and dobro under interwoven harmonies that sing of hearts ash-streaked and hands not quite clean. However, the burn is less spectacle than reckoning; the groove steps forward with stoic dignity, letting the refrain (“we’ve been burned by the cinders”) linger like woodsmoke on a coat. “The Dark (Ft. Katies Wise)” is the album’s hearth-side lament, its Collings mahogany guitar holding the center while Civil War drum smashes, cello, and upright bass build a weather system around a love that couldn’t outpace nightfall. The line “I lost you to the dark in the end” lands with terrible clarity—tender, not theatrical—and the arrangement honors that ache by gathering heat, then letting it dissipate. “Flower (Ft. Anon)” answers the question of how knots tangle: a minimalist acoustic (muted with a sponge) sets the stage for pedal steel sighs, hammer dulcimer sparkle, and a soaring duet where winter enters the room and never apologizes. Moreover, the chorus holds its petals even as frost thickens; vulnerability becomes the architecture, not merely the décor.
A very short turn through the remaining songs sketches the album’s constellation. “Life Is Easy (Ft. Katies Wise)” flips an aphorism on its head, building from finger-picked double–drop-D intricacy into foot-stomp claps and communal harmonies—resilience taught as rhythm. “Time To Love” is the tear-salted candle on the windowsill: Christmas, chemo, the moonlit lake of childhood, the train that keeps rolling; the vocal stays steady so the listener can safely break. In Addition, “Leave It In The Snow” offers release rather than denial—trailing violin, soft drums, tranquil guitar—where letting go sounds strangely like thaw. “Tossed Aside (Ft. Anon)” turns abandonment into a clear-eyed ledger, pedal steel tracing the margins. “What To Leave (Ft. Katies Wise)” whispers the ethics of pruning—a waltz of acoustic strums that inventories burdens and keeps only the living things. “The Longest Year (Ft. Anon)” slows the clocks with bowed low end and a lantern of melody; the chorus refuses melodrama, choosing witness. And “Fighting For (Ft. Katies Wise)” closes the circle with flint and grace, a tender stride that names what survives the storm and stakes a claim on light.
What animates Songs From A Secret Room is its humane proportion. Rusin never mistakes volume for intensity; he trusts tone, word choice, and the humble miracle of people listening together. The vibe is hearth-warm, river-clear: music to hold a hand to, music to fold laundry to, music to process the news by. Indeed, these songs do not posture as answers; they fellowship our questions. By the final cadence, you feel less alone and more awake—a small triumph that, in art as in recovery, is the whole point.
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