CD Review of Eugene Ruffalo’s
The Hardest Easy
From Wood & Steel Magazine's "Indie Artists On Review" Section
by Bryan Beller
Published Winter, 2006

Pop songwriting, as a craft, is a deceptively elusive and difficult thing. 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 Ruffalo, a New York-based singer/songwriter/guitarist of the highest professional order. His pure vocal talent alone has landed him session work with artists as disparate as Garth Brooks to Livingston Taylor to 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, Ruffalo’s third album, is his take on the dangers and aspirations of love, and 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” is one 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, Ruffalo 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 that could all 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.

Ruffalo’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. “The Hills Of Sicily” (co-written with Taylor clinician Artie Traum) in particular 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 Ruffalo’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.

This copyrighted article first appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Taylor Guitars' quarterly publication, Wood&Steel. It is reproduced here by permission of Taylor Guitars for the sole discretionary use of Bryan Beller and cannot be reproduced or reprinted anywhere else without the express permission and consent of Taylor Guitars