Julie Christmas has one of rock's most versatile voices. Technical range does not necessarily equal emotional range, and Christmas is one of a select few who have both. Like Björk, Jarboe, and Diamanda Galas, Christmas can plummet within seconds from sweet nothings to feral growls. Even at her lightest, she retains an edge. Her voice is tart and taut, and her screams feel more like inevitabilities than conscious extensions of range. Unlike her counterparts in heavy music, who often replicate male roles, Christmas' presence is quite feminine; Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland comes to mind.
A vocal instrument as magnificent as Christmas' requires a suitable context. She has had problems finding one. Her main band, Brooklyn's Made Out of Babies, has been hit-or-miss. At best, they coalesce into fearsome heavy metal thunder. At worst, they devolve into aimless, plodding sludge. Christmas' other band, Battle of Mice, often has the same problem. Battle of Mice's last record, A Day of Nights, was musically earnest, lyrically honest, and virtually unlistenable. Christmas' projects have tended to over-emphasize her voice's abrasive side.
The Ruiner is the first record that truly harnesses Christmas' range. This is because it's the first that truly harnesses Made Out of Babies' range. Due to time constraints, the band's writing process fractured, with members working individually or in small combinations. This produced their most varied, nuanced record to date. For the first time, Christmas has a backing palette with colors to match. Guitars unspool jangly curlicues; drums and bass joust with the suppleness of Jesus Lizard. "Stranger" dangles eerie dewdrops of melody over abstract chords. The song perches precariously between dark and light, as Christmas lashes it with throat-shredding howls. "Peew" likewise plays with balance. Wordless cooings course over chugging riffs, which burst open with punishing percussive flurries. "The Major" recasts Björk as a doom metal diva, while "Invisible Ink" is a tour de force of melisma and major thirds à la Trent Reznor.
Noise-rock and metal comprise much of The Ruiner, but it's really the heir to PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. That record's Led Zeppelin-esque bombast (recorded by Steve Albini, who also engineered The Ruiner's predecessor, Coward) appears here in big, boxy drums and Christmas' dramatic vocals. Like Harvey, she sings, screams, and seduces all at once. In "Cooker", the words "Run, run for your life" repeatedly erupt from her throat like napalm. They feel like something Charlie McGee might have said in Firestarter before she set the world alight.
