There’s something about a voice that slaps you across the face when you first hear it. Ryan Rickenbach crashes like a wrecking ball into the eardrums. When his voice swings into the opening song, “Bad Man,” particularly when he lilts into his falsetto, he hooks into the part of the brain that stores melodies. That’s the meaty experience of his first full-length record, Sirens. Acoustic guitars buzz the senses, framing his honeyed vocal. And it’s all nestled around heart-torn, well-worn lyrics that seem to crack like thunder. “When you don’t in, you lose / I got so much fucking fight, I do not want to hear your truth tonight,” he crows in “Halleluja Here We Go,” a zipper of a track corkscrewing into the brain.
With its world-weariness, “For You” sees Rickenbach wandering, tumbleweed-like, through a barren landscape. “Many friends I have made along the way that kept good company as days passed away,” he sings, stressing that he’s never been alone, but he wants more. “And though I pray, I have done the same in kind / A heart needs more than just camaraderie beside.” Here, a lonesome guitar accompanies him and perfectly captures the emotional tug-of-war playing inside his chest.
Produced by Cass Dillon, Sirens dots along between funky grooves (“Morphine Heart”) and stories about longing (“Porcelain”), regret (“Fruit Tree,” his most lyrically piercing on the record), and relishing the fleeting nature of a quiet embrace (“Lover Lay”). Rickenbach reaches his creative apex with the closing song, “Down in the Country,” barreling along the track. “Down in the country, that’s where I love you,” he sings. “Watching the sun set over the hill / It’s alright now.” Rickenbach seizes the listener with his best vocal to date. He glides over the melody, intricate vocal choices wrestling the emotion to the ground.
Ryan Rickenbach’s Sirens doesn’t just beckon you to the shoreline; it also manages to fully immerse you in a musical storm so rich that it shatters the shelter on craggy rock. From the front-porch jammin’ “Cocaine Blues” to the luminous “In Two” (“You broke me in two / God knows it ain’t easy loving you, but I do,” he admits), the 12-song record drenches in odes of love and loss. It’s not so easy making a record so firmly rooted in love, but Rickenbach makes it damn irresistible.
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