Culture
Discussing ‘Riding the Whirlwind,’ COVID-19, and the Apocalypse with Albert Rouzie
By: Emily Votaw
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It feels like it was an eon ago that Athens-based singer-songwriter and Professor Emeritus Albert Rouzie dropped copies of his 2018 release Songs of Love and Debacle and his April 2020 release Riding the Whirlwind in my mailbox — contactless, of course.
Over the course of the next month of so I would labor to decipher some kind of deep, penetrating overarching truth culled from the album. This was a mistake, and truly, it is the kind of mistake one is prone to make in the midst of a global pandemic that simultaneously makes everything seem absolutely profound and terribly inconsequential.
As it turns out, both albums are simply solid full-length releases — nothing esoteric to analyze at all: the first a bit more sparse, with more solo Rouzie; and the second recorded with the assistance of Athens’ supergroup The Wingnuts.
Listen to my conversation with Rouzie about the albums, COVID-19, and why I might have felt some of the tracks from his records were especially presient, embedded above, as well as a few tracks from Riding the Whirlwind.