Pop songwriting, as a craft, is deceptively elusive and difficult. The writer makes choices about instrumentation, harmonic content, form, melody, lyrics, and myriad other components long before the song’s final vision is realized. The hope is that the little pieces blend into one, the composite parts are forgotten, and only the song and its true meaning are heard and understood by the listener. It’s a lot easier said than done, especially when trying to convey feelings of loss, love, sadness, and hope.
Enter Eugene Ruffolo, a New York-based singer/songwriter/guitarist of the highest professional order. His vocal talent alone has landed him session work with artists as disparate as Garth Brooks, Livingston Taylor, and Tony Bennett, and his voice can be heard on countless Hollywood film soundtracks. But his rich, soulful, singing (certain passages conjure up a modern-day Bill Withers) is but a piece of his true talent: the ability to evoke deep emotion through his own material, line by line, seemingly at will.
The Hardest Easy, Ruffolo’s third album, is his take on the dangers and aspirations of love. On the title track, he makes his mixed feelings clear — affairs of the heart, described in fragile detail, are not without effort, fear, pain, and wavering resolve. He’s certainly not afraid to get dark. “Irreplaceable” and “A Kiss for Your Travels” are desperate, plaintive wails in song form for a dearly departed friend, and the ironically titled “Gracefully” could be a candidate for the songs-to-stab-yourself-over hall of fame (“We walked here together/it takes two to break the vow/from glory to ashes/yeah, just take a look at us now”).
Just when you think all is hopeless and lost, Ruffolo smiles and winks with “Run to You”, a spry, clever, “I’m in love with you” ditty with a bouncy groove, major tonality, and a quirky string arrangement, all of which could fit perfectly on side two of the Beatles’ “White Album”. And the uplifting album closer, “Only Love”, speaks for itself in its yearning for The One True Thing, no matter what the cost.
Ruffolo’s songs are so holistically complete that it’s easy to gloss-over the rewarding instrumentation. Backing vocals, percussion, strings, and even lap steel guitar weave in and out, seamlessly, almost unnoticeably. You can be lulled into forgetting that acoustic guitar anchors nearly every track. In particular, “The Hills of Sicily” (co-written with Taylor clinician Artie Traum) features a beautiful-sounding, room-miked guitar and rich, complex harmonic textures that make you wonder how he keeps it so simple with so much songwriting and instrumental talent at his disposal.
But that’s how Ruffolo’s craft works, and its simplicity in execution only serves to illuminate how far a heart can rise, fall, and rise again. Utterly conventional, yet somehow effortlessly unique in its beauty and emotional expression, this album landed square in my chest and is stuck there still.
— Bryan Beller
Pop songwriting, as a craft, is deceptively elusive and difficult. The writer makes choices about instrumentation, harmonic content, form, melody, lyrics, and myriad other components long before the song’s final vision is realized. The hope is that the little pieces blend into one, the composite parts are forgotten, and only the song and its true meaning are heard and understood by the listener. It’s a lot easier said than done, especially when trying to convey feelings of loss, love, sadness, and hope.