Music

Emma Ruth Rundle Explores the Hopefulness of Mortality in “Real Big Sky”

Photo by Nedda Asfari​

​Emma Ruth Rundle opens her video for “Real Big Sky” with a monologue about appreciating the ethereal. “I don’t think there’s anything more exhilarating than seeing natural beauty,” she says. “It’s like seeing things that there aren’t words for.”

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True to that theme, the song and video are haunting, transcendent, and a bunch of other adjectives you might throw out in a vain attempt at describing something whose beauty can’t easily be contained with words. Set against the darkness of dusk, the video sees Rundle, the wonderfully gloomy songwriter behind acts like Marriages and Red Sparowes, waxing about the hopefulness of mortality over the discordant yet sweet sounds of her scratchy guitar. “Real Big Sky” is the final song on her crushing new album, Marked for Death. It is, in a word, beautiful.

Marked for Death is out September 30 via Sargent House​, and Emma Ruth Rundle is on tour with Wovenhand. Dates below the video.