Before Ruston Kelly began work on his third album, The Weakness, he moved out of his Nashville home and into an old Victorian bungalow in the small Tennessee town of Portland. There, he spent months on end in deliberate solitude, in an attempt to process a number of life-altering changes he’d endured over the past year, including a very public divorce as well as major upheaval in his immediate family.

“I felt a real need to understand myself a little better, and to rediscover the true foundation of who I am,” says Kelly, who candidly detailed his struggle with drug addiction on his 2018 full-length debut Dying Star. Pushing forward with the intensely self-aware truth-telling he’s always brought to his music, Kelly soon immersed himself in the making of The Weakness and the result is a blisteringly honest but profoundly hopeful album that ultimately reveals our vast potential to create strength and beauty from the most painful of experiences.

The Weakness finds Kelly collaborating for the first time with producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nate Mercereau (Sharon Van Etten, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers), who welcomed the artist into his Los Angeles-based Studio Tujunga. “The way I’d always worked in the past is that the song comes first, and the production helps to lift its meaning and intent,” Kelly explains. “But this time there was a much greater focus on creating a sonic atmosphere that speaks just as loudly and feels just as emotional as the lyrics and voice.”

Released April 7th, 2023 via Rounder Records, The Weakness is available on limited edition Bluejay colored vinyl, available exclusively at independent record stores, and on CD.

Track Listing

Side A
1.The Weakness
2.Hellfire
3.St. Jupiter
4.Let Only Love Remain
5.Michael Keaton
6.Mending Song

Side B
1.Dive
2.Breakdown
3.Holy Shit
4.Better Now
5.Wicked Hands
6.Cold Black Mile