rum.gold released the long-awaited follow-up to 2023’s U Street Anthology in the form of Is There Anybody Home? via Independent Co.
Washington D.C’s rum.gold has released his 3rd studio album in full after releasing more than half of it in the months leading up to its release, giving listeners a significant look into the world and sonic palette of the forthcoming album with songs like "Love Me Better," "Is It Something I Said," and "Good Bones" to name a few.
On this foray, gold pushes the boundaries of what an R&B song can be, especially with its experimental production, which occasionally leans into more industrial sounds in the vein of a JPEGMAFIA or Danny Brown, all laced between beautifully melancholic ballads and more traditional R&B.
Most impressively, however, gold manages to retain his artistic integrity, never allowing the experimentation to overshadow what makes a rum.gold song a rum.gold song.
For longtime fans, this album will feel like a natural extension of rum.gold’s signature style, and for new listeners, it will serve as a fantastic launchpad upon which they can explore a musician whose artistry and intentionality seem to grow with every project.
Beginning the album is the short and sweet "Intro – Might as Well." Coming in at just over 40 seconds, the song sets the tone for what listeners can expect from the rest of the project and acts as an interlude for the following track, "Asleep at the Wheel." “Might as well just pull me over, ‘cause I won’t make it to you sober,” gold’s distant and murky vocals croon over muddy synth chords and the ambiance of children playing.
Echoy, despondent vocalizations that sound like guitar licks cut through the noise as the track draws to a close, leading directly into the aforementioned "Asleep at the Wheel," which begins with the same despondent vocalizations set over an acoustic guitar chord progression.
"Asleep at the Wheel" finds gold likening the trajectory of his relationship to being asleep at the wheel of a speeding car, drunk and unresponsive.
“Will I ever make it to our future, or will our love just be a rumor?” gold asks desperately, shirking his signature falsetto inflection for a candid and unfiltered second verse, laid over minimal production. This line perfectly summarizes the sentiment of the song and foreshadows themes that reappear later in the album.
Gold desperately wants to save his relationship, despite seeming to be catalyzing the widening of an already existing fracture between him and his partner by engaging in actions and behaviors that actively jeopardize their shared future. Gold may be subconsciously aware of this, but doesn’t seem to really acknowledge it until later on in the album.
One of gold’s primary strengths throughout this project is his seemingly innate ability to liken his real-world feelings and experiences to the broader world around him, using delicately crafted and intricate metaphors.
Outside of "Asleep at the Wheel," nowhere is this more powerful and emotionally potent than on the single "Walking Dead," and the music video for "Is It Something I Said."
The former sees the singer lamenting a “body that’s still breathing,” equating his relationship to the undead, zombified remains of a person in that it’s technically still living, but is dead by all intents and purposes; an obvious analogy to that period just before a break-up in which the writing is on the wall, and each party is merely waiting for the shoe to fall. The latter draws a parallel between the trauma that we inherit from our parents during childhood to hoarding.
The video revolves around a young boy living in a house with a neglectful mother whose hoarding problem has spun out of control, and is now something that the young boy has to contend with and navigate through.
Sonically, "Is It Something I Said" has some of the most standout production on the entire project.
Opening with gold’s sullen falsetto vocals laid over warm, isolated piano keys, the song could have easily been a straightforward emotional ballad in the vein of something like "Another Life." However, gold subverts expectations by introducing glitchy synths and heavy, industrial drums at around the 40-second mark. Gold embraces a druggy-sounding, dejected, and monotone performance in lieu of his trademark falsetto intonation, and the layered, somewhat zombified vocals mesh surprisingly well against the abrasive production.
It feels like gold is trapped in a storm of emotion as he sings lines like “It’s a bad daydream or a good nightmare / I always know when something’s wrong / I see you even when you’re out of sight / It’s killing me tonight, I don’t wanna fight.” The song ends with a return to something more ballad-esque, with gold repeating the refrain “Nobody loves you better / Nobody loves you like I, like I,” laced in reverb and set over distant piano keys. By this point, it sounds like he’s singing alone in his room with no one around to hear his desperation.
Some other standouts include the title track "Is There Anybody Home," "Love Me Better," and the album closer "Good Bones." "Is There Anybody Home" feels like a turning point in the album, both thematically and sonically. While there is a dreaminess to the track, the bongo drums, tambourines, subtle synths, and bass licks feel almost ominous and haunting when combined with gold’s ghostly performance.
It feels like a storm is just over the horizon, waiting to crash onto shore and wreak havoc. That storm begins in the last leg of the song, wherein the introduction of a seemingly uplifting synth gives way to hard-hitting, distorted drums that nearly overtake gold’s words.
“New lights, new walls, new paint covers up the old stains, but not hard days / You’re gone, but I’ll wait for you, every day for you,” gold sings just as the drums begin to descend on the closing of the track.
"Love Me Better" feels like a full-circle moment in which the refrain “Nobody’s gonna love me better / better than you did,” is starkly juxtaposed to the refrain of “Nobody loves you better / Nobody loves you like I” that’s heard in "Is It Something I Said." It’s the penultimate song on the album and is the other side of the aforementioned storm; a storm which gold himself outlines in "Act of God / Force Majeure" with lines like “I hope that we will be alright / I pray we make it through the night / ‘cause when your eye began to rain / our love is deemed a hurricane.” "Love Me Better" also marks the first time in which gold seems to take ownership of his relationship’s failure. He dubs himself a “Good guy with a bad side,” and gets painfully introspective as he deconstructs the breakdown of his three-year marriage. The electric guitar chords and slow, pulsing drum loop act as an apt backdrop for gold’s unfiltered sentiments.
Finally, there’s "Good Bones," the album’s closer, wherein gold seems to finally accept the ending of his relationship, realizing that both he and his partner had a part to play in its demise. Set to warm synths in the vein of blonde-era Frank Ocean and low guitar licks that blossom into a piano-driven conclusionary ballad, gold’s heart-wrenching performance is given full room to breathe, filling the track with a profound level of emotion and soul.
Without a doubt, "Good Bones" is the most powerfully cathartic vocal performance on the album. This feeling of catharsis carries over into the production, where at the end of the song, heavy and distorted electric guitar chords explode into the track, feeling like a final incendiary moment before the album fizzles out with the lines “If I ever sell this broken home / I’ll tell them that it has good bones.”
Is There Anybody Home? serves as arguably one of the most succinct and cohesive, lyrically and sonically dense, introspective, and experimentally boundary-pushing R&B albums of at least the last 5-years.
It's clear that rum.gold feels everything, and he feels it in excruciatingly painful detail that he never shies away from. Even with the few tracks that fail to stand out in the same way that most others do, like "Friend of a Friend" or "Another Life," Is There Anybody Home? is still a fantastic listen that, even at its least memorable moments, is filled with intentionality, depth, and raw, unfettered emotion.
Is There Anybody Home? by rum.gold is available on all DSPs
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