In January of 2020, Emma Ruth Rundle checked herself into a cottage in rural Wales for a month. Searching for time alone with her guitar in order to sink into the isolation and write new music after a month-long European tour, the rugged hills and the fact that, unlike in America, there’s “5,000-year-old Neolithic burial chambers that are just there”, provided a perfect setting in which to work. What she was also looking for was a break. Something of a gypsy by nature, the successes of her music – solo with 2018’s excellent On Dark Horses, her collaborations with artists like U.S. doom outfit Thou – had afforded her the opportunity to have a bohemian, rock’n’roll life, one in which there were few concerns besides music, touring and art. Money wasn’t...