Dave Ruder – Lil Ol Davy Ru Ru

released on cassette and digitally November 7th, 2025

Like all of Dave Ruder‘s albums in the past decade, Lil Ol Davy Ru Ru lives at the armpit of art music and popular music. “Masculine Urge” and “elision addition” have verses and choruses and rock-ish instruments, while art songs like “Repenting Stranger” and “Like a Canyon” make use of more expansive structures and sonic colors. Ruder is not afraid of a miniature, and more than half of these songs clock in under 2:45. Even songs that are written in a familiar idiom ignore the expectations of where they’re going and what their subject matter is. Informed by his years of work with composer Robert Ashley, singing and speaking occur along a porous spectrum throughout on this album. The material is all of a piece with itself, but you never know what’s next.

2020 and 2021 were littered with “Covid albums”, and Ruder’s previous full length, not Great, falls into the standard understanding of this category – all the players recorded themselves separately at home and themes of bodily struggle and isolation pervade. Significantly, this album is Ruder’s first Long Covid album (even though the condition started for him in the summer of 2020). Unlike earlier solo albums, Ruder could not play any instruments for Lil Ol Davy Ru Ru due to disabling hand and wrist problems exacerbated by Long Covid, and so he rigorously scored out each part and hired a crew of crack NYC musicians as the band.

No two tracks on this album have exactly the same instrumentation, and each track explores a different genre and format. “Speaking in Similes” lets rip polymetric, shredding guitar and Wurlitzer lines over a chirping electronic wood block. “Like a Canyon” also omits the drums but brings in flute, trumpet, and trombone for a chamber feel. “Masculine Urge” cuts its rock feel with (obviously) multi-tracked flute. “Strings of the King” is built around wind and percussion hockets that are a little breezy, a little funky, a little mathy. “Repenting Stranger” takes us to a washy land of accordion, trombone, and double bass, a quaint landscape in which to set a narrative of an outsider/colonizer fetishizing local practices.

Lyrically, this album dances between the erudite and the crude. Lead track “James Worthy” uses the name of a basketball legend (about whom Ruder admits he knows very little) as a way to advocate for “giving everyone everything”. “Loaf Cakes Are For Surfers” could come from the notebook of a 90s surrealist like Beck or Soul Coughing, but despite its obscure meaning, the lines are delivered with utmost seriousness. “Red Footed Duck” is a kind of koan about birds and the sun. Album closer “Don’t Touch Me” is a genuine plea to not be fucked with, but some listeners might hear it a dozen times and not grasp its complete sincerity. 

written and produced by Dave Ruder
mostly recorded 3/31 & 4/1/25 at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY
Engineered and edited by Michael Hammond
mixed by David Bernabo, mastered by Joel Hatstat
art by Dave Ruder (that’s a viscacha)

performed by:
Miranda Agnew – trumpet
Gelsey Bell – vocals on “Don’t Touch Me”
Robby Bowen – drum kit, shaker, wood block
Cory Bracken – marimba on “Strings of the King”
Andrew Livingston – introduction to “Seltzer to a Bee”
Emily Manzo – Wurlitzer electric piano
Mae May – electric guitar
Roberta Michel – flute
Rebecca Patterson – trombone
Carmen Quill – double bass
Dave Ruder – voice, all instruments on “Seltzer to a Bee”
Aliza Simons – vocals on “Red Footed Duck”
Jeff Tobias – bass clarinet on “Strings of the King”

The I-O-N Choir on the choruses of “elision addition” is Robby, Emily, Mae, Carmen, Dave, and Aliza