Written by Emily Moosbrugger | Featured Photo by Noa Francis

Last month Minneapolis-based songwriter runo plum released her debut album “patching,” after five years of self-releasing a series of singles and EPs. Joined by co-producer Lutalo and instrumentalist and girlfriend Noa Francis, runo recorded the album in two weeks in a cabin in rural Vermont. The resulting 12 songs were described by runo as “emotional fragments” of her healing process compiled into one project. 

Rooted in the aftermath of a recent heartbreak, “patching” places its trust in life’s natural cycles. As early as the opening line, runo’s plainspoken, cool delivery echoes a calming sense of patience amidst her growing anxieties: “As long as it doesn’t mean it’s a big sickness/ Mighty fine with me, I’ve been already through this.” The record moves through the ebbs and flows of emotional reconstruction, drifting from daydreamed fantasies of sweeter times to soul-baring introspection. “There’s gotta be a way to get out from under the mud,” she sings on “Pond” with a yearning for clarity. It is moments like these that define “patching,” in which runo makes clear that even in her deepest melancholy, she is held together by a faith in her natural ability to be put together again. 

Congratulations on your first record release? How does it feel to have it out?

Hello! It’s surreal, and a big relief. 

You described these songs as “emotional fragments” of your healing process patched together into one project. In addition to writing these songs, do you feel like sharing them with the world is part of your process of healing? 

Absolutely, it feels like the final step in some way. 

You mentioned you had written enough material for three records at the time of writing “patching” – how were you able to separate these songs from everything you wrote at that time? 

The main two are split between the more “folk” ones and the heavier more “rock” ones. The third are just shitty sappy discarded songs that I will probably never use lol! 

I read that you put out your first release through Bandcamp in 2020. You’ve been able to gather a community of listeners from around the world since then – has having a community like this impacted your relationship to music making? 

Totally. It’s definitely kept me going during certain moments. It’s really touching to be able to make something that is meaningful to more than just myself. 

Had you been writing music for a while before you started releasing your songs?

Never consistently. I would write occasionally since I was like 14 ish. Maybe like a dozen songs in total in my teen years. Then I really started writing in my 20s. 

How do you feel your songwriting and recording process have changed from the time you started putting music out to now? 

My songwriting especially has gotten a lot more meaningful to me. I’ve had a hard time being able to access that in the past, and being able to properly articulate how I was feeling. In the beginning I had a lot of songs where I wasn’t really saying anything, I was sort of just rambling about random things. I still write like that sometimes but generally it all feels more cohesive to me. 

For recording, in the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. I taught myself how to produce and record for the first couple years, and then Phillip Brooks came along and helped me record the early stuff I have out. But we were really just both figuring it out as we went. A lot of the songs on ‘patching’ feel like the sound I was trying to get to for many years. 

One of my favorites on the record is “the Quiet One” – You open with the line “how can I make this as vague as I possibly can?” – I love that because you touch on wanting to come off strong to your subjects yet your songwriting is so intimate and raw. How would you describe your relationship to vulnerability within songwriting? 

Oh wow, yeah. That one is somewhat of a black sheep of the album that I made fit in. It’s funny because I started with that first line, and then it turned out to not be so vague. This song was a place for me to put my feelings about a short lived thing I had with someone. I never shared it with them, so having it out is definitely pretty vulnerable, but I think that is just a part of being an artist, and especially a writer. It is all just very human feelings and I know so many relate to this stuff so that makes it easier to share. 

The outro stands out from the rest of the record both lyrically and instrumentally – can you tell me a little bit about that imagery and this song? 

Yeah! This was originally a poem I wrote during a really beautiful walk I had last summer. It was one of those weird weather moments when it was slightly raining and also sunny. It felt very representative of the contrast I was feeling in my emotional world. At that point I was falling in love again after the breakup that was the catalyst for patching, and I had reached a level of beauty and peace that felt really unexpected.

You can listen to patching out everywhere now as well as grab it on vinyl, CD or cassette via Winspear. Catch runo plum on her first headlinging US tour starting in February.