A conversation with musician Ruby Rose Fox. Fox released her debut album, Domestic, in May. It’s soulful, it rocks, and it has something to say (you can read the review on the Department of Tangents Blog). It’s an impressive statement from a songwriter who knows her own voice, even more impressive considering Fox really only started writing songs in 2012. We talked about the inspiration behind some of her songs and her approach to the darker material on the album.

In songs like “Rock Bottom” and “Dance of Frankenstein,” Fox takes the thorny issue of how an individual’s identity it measured against the whole, and just how destructive that can be. There’s a lot to think about in the lyrics, but if people hear the music and just want to dance, she’s fine with that, too.

“I toe a pretty dangerous line in terms of like, politics and music,” she says. “I think that it’s really just me standing there saying, ‘This is what I think.’ And I love uncovering stories that I feel like need to be told but we’re maybe too ashamed to tell them or they’ve never been told or a story in my life that I need to uncover or explain. But I don’t have an agenda. I think if I ever get to that place where I feel self-righteous or I feel like, ‘You need to think what I think,’ then I will absolutely drop music and become a politician.”

We spoke at her rehearsal space for the band on a humid day in August, and you can hear the fan blowing in the background. At the end of the conversation, Fox spoke about her future in music, and whether that’s the place where she can do the most good in the world. She’s not sure what’s next. “If I do stay in music it’ll be a different project, I think.”

But there are new songs already bubbling up, and Fox sat down at her keyboard to play an unreleased tune called “Conspiracy Theory.”

Stay tuned after that for a new song from rock and roll singer/songwriter Beaver Nelson, who releases his newest album, Positive, on August 22.