Every relationship teaches us about ourselves, lessons emerging from love discovered, cultivated, and lost. Within these lessons, we can sometimes find a sense of peace. In Lara Ruggles’ new record Anchor Me, the Tucson songwriter looks back on the truths she has uncovered in the span of over a decade. The fall of her first significant relationship, the magic of falling in love again, the reaching of another breaking point, and the ability to save a love worth saving: Ruggles navigates these significant points in her history with the grace that comes with an open heart and the patience to try to understand what has happened.
In many ways, Anchor Me is a return to form, a rediscovery of Ruggles’ vulnerability both in lyricism and production. Ruggles grew up 40 miles outside of Tucson on 7 acres surrounded by cattle ranches, her songwriting blossoming out of the isolation she felt. Eventually, she moved to Denver, where she spent the better part of a decade touring and performing, firmly rooting herself in the Colorado folk scene. In 2016, she returned home to Tucson, where she started her project Sharkk Heartt, which allowed her to explore songwriting through infectious electro-pop anthems that marked a distinct departure from her previous sound. It was only recently that Ruggles found herself collecting songs (and writing a few new ones) that didn’t seem to have a place to go, songs that felt too intimate and personal for Sharkk Heartt.
The songs on Anchor Me are compassionate and warm, even while circling deep pain and loss. Lara Ruggles and Steve Varney tracked most of the record in three days on Gregory Alan Isakov’s farm in Boulder, Colorado. Ruggles then brought in friend and Emmy-winning composer Tyler Sabbag to add percussion, and finished the project with Steven Tracy at Saint Cecilia Studios in Tucson. The arrangements are left open, alternating between piano ballads and understated folk-rock that allow Ruggles’s powerful voice to soar through the mix. Whether she is delivering a gut-punch of a realization or a contemplative rumination, the songs feel close, tangible, and real.
Today Glide is sharing an exclusive premiere of the sleeper hit of the record, “Lighthouse,” which allows the listener a moment of pause. Dreamy and sparse with Ruggles’s voice accompanied by little more than acoustic guitar and reverberating piano keys, the song puts her soulful and folk-wisened vocals in the spotlight as she remembers an impenetrable partnership in some warm place in her past. There is a deep thoughtfulness to these lyrics that transcends the lack of density, fitting for an artist who calls the desert home.
Ruggles describes the inspiration behind the tune:
I’m usually a pretty wordy songwriter, so it feels like a nice change when a song like Lighthouse comes along with just enough lyrics to create a sort of sense impression. This song came easily, and I wrote it in 2018 as an exercise, just trying to capture a similar sort of nostalgic feeling as another song that a friend of mine couldn’t use in a video because of copyright. It wasn’t about anything in particular, just this idea of looking back on something that was meant to last but may not have…I like the idea that maybe the central relationship still exists, just in a different form. But when we were adding the finishing touches, which include the harmonies my sister (Brenna Ruggles) sang, my friend Steven Lee Tracy (who mixed the album and finished the production with me) said he had assumed it was about me and my sister growing up together, and I like that interpretation so much that it’s what I think about every time I sing this one now.
LISTEN:
