MARIAN RUNK, TWO WIRES AND A SPARK

It’s coming on April, and I’m on a bus / traveling toward a city of rust / The red-feathered birds are all back from the south / I’m headed east, riddled with doubt,” Chicago’s Americana artist Marian Runk sings on her album of honest folk songs about desire and disappointment called Two Wires and a Spark which came out last September. The songs are filled out with trumpet here and fiddle there, they’re easy on the ears, but heavy on the heart.

“So I could try to write a happy song / But who really wants to hear me say nothing’s wrong?” she sings towards the end of the album. But her woes are couched in clever, setting-rich songs that tell compelling stories, like the song about a partner who drinks too much. “These drinking songs are drowning me / Making light of the devil that takes you from me.”