Ten albums in, Justin Rutledge could easily rest on his reputation in perpetuity because he’s accumulated the sort of daunting body of work upon which one could easily coast. Instead, on "Something Easy", Justin Rutledge did the opposite. He made things exceedingly difficult for himself and decided to write, record, and produce the poised, subtly powerful set of songs by himself at home. With one, then later two, bouncing baby boys underfoot, to boot. The results speak for themselves. "Something Easy" is a serene, stately thing of beauty, a gently paced record that really rewards the patient listener with meticulous detail and unexpected instrumental happenings – a waft of trumpet in the mid-section to “Head for the Hills,” say, or the 808 drumbeat that introduces first single “Easy” – lurking in the capacious arrangements. It’s anything but Rutledge settling into a rut. It will surprise you. That Rutledge can still catch us off guard two decades into his career definitely should not come as a surprise, mind you. The man is very good at what he does. Accolades have piled up at his feet since he released his first album, "No Never Alone", via Six Shooter Records in Canada and Slowdive/Mojave 3 main man Neil Halstead’s Shady Lane Records overseas back in 2004 to rave reviews in such international publications as Uncut and NME. He’s won a Juno Award for Roots Album of the Year in 2014 for the album "Valleyheart" – which also landed him a Canadian Folk Music Award – and has since been nominated for three more Junos. He’s been longlisted twice for the critic-voted Polaris Music Prize, and has penned songs with Booker Prize-winning author of ‘The English Patient,’ Michael Ondaatje. Rutledge has also had songs included in film and television, including the Zac Efron film The Lucky One or TV shows The Blacklist, Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. The music gets around. The guts to tear up the rulebook as Rutledge does on "Something Easy" can only come with maturity, with growing older and gaining control of your craft. It has, thus, been interesting for the album’s author to see, in hindsight, recurring themes of youth and memory bubbling up all over the record, in the somewhat self-explanatory “Angry Young Man,” the wistful bush-party vignette “Seventeen,” the dreamy post-prom memoir “Lioness” and “London,” which flashes back to the year Rutledge spent living in London when he was 18. “All of these songs are about youth, and I hadn’t realized that,” he says. “And it’s interesting because I feel that, as a new dad, there’s this transition that’s happening where suddenly I’m realizing I’m in my 40s. And what’s happening is that our wild-and-free years are suddenly over there, and our ‘middle-aged’ years are now right here. I feel like I’m at this apex where I’m thinking a lot about my youth, But I’m not lamenting anything. I’m not old, I’m just shocked at how suddenly this new phase of life has begun.”
