Album Review :
Former Ruins - In Your Field

Watching Former Ruins transform from a pseudo-acoustic, lyrically-witty, bedroom project into a full-production Heartland rock format with full studio production has been incredible to watch. The project, led by Levi Dylan Sikes, looked much different than it does now: Sikes toyed as much with mewithoutYou covers as he did with rebukes of cheap faith and deconstruction. The format, within the context of itself, was certainly compelling. But it was clearly just a shadow of what Former Ruins would truly become. No Creature Is Hidden gave listeners a consistent stream of full-band songs, bolder commentary, and a more defined thematic thread of humanity as creature.

In Your Field picks up where No Creature Is Hidden left off, and it feels more like a sister piece than than a dramatic step forward. Perhaps this is fitting; the album drips with sentiments of the unspoken accolades of the quiet and honest life, borrowing language from LinkedIn execs and financial experts and flipping these terms on their heads. But In Your Field truly excels in its execution of its concepts to a far great degree than its predecessors. Sikes’ lyrics have always been the focal point for me, and I immediately noted the ways the songs tied together in ways both clear and subtle.

Musically, while it’s not necessarily a huge shift from No Creature Is Hidden, there’s definitely a unique personality here. The acoustic simplicity of “Flannelgraph” is resurrected and adorned with royal garb on tracks like “Watering Flowers”. “Advancing” shows a rhythm-heavy Western-flavored vibe that feels distinct compared to its compatriots. There’s the brief, Killers-esque intro on “To Wonder” and the folky cinematicism of “All Ages Run.”

As usual, there’s plenty to feast on conceptually. Whether it’s quips on the repetitive nature of “Oceans” and the trendiness of WWJD bracelets discussed in “Back Into a Body”, the poetic-yet-blunt rebuke of AI generated pornography on “New Attachment”, or the recognition that raising a family is as much valuable work as any corporate career on “One Hundredfold”, In Your Field shows Sikes’ trademark depth and wit. It’s fair to say that each song lives within its own degree of controversy for the sole fact we live an age where work has been corrupted and distorted and the workers themselves have become undignified. This feels even more powerful considering Sikes’ own career trajectory and time in tech. Then there’s the notions of fighting against the subtle and symbolic notions of God by remembering the weight of His bodily incarnation, there are calls to forsake our worldly ideas of success, and there are pleas to prepare ourselves and those under or care for hard times ahead. The imagery is plentiful, and Sikes carefully navigates the tender valley between consistency and cliche with his notions of “working in a field”. Funnily enough, “New Attachment” seems to sum up the ethos of the whole record:

I don’t need to know how

Dark the darkness gets

As much as I

Need to be enlightened and I

Don’t need to know

How low the bar’s been set

As much as I

Need to reach for heaven

While the track itself is perhaps the most direct social rebuke of the album, Sikes proves that he can just as easily wield power and weight through songs of chastity and endurance as much as he can submit lyrical tactical strikes through the likes of “Flannelgraph”, “Chaplain”, “Sign”, and “False Infinities”. Sikes points thoroughly to joy and hope, and he even takes shots at his own mindset on “Hard to Tell”:

I get so cynical so quick

About it all, it’s alarming

But your tenderness when my kiss is treacherous

Is thoroughly disarming

The sentiments here, while powerful in their immediate contexts, have far greater application – especially in light of recent events. We’re surrounded by tragedy and pain, and the reality is, there’s more evil in the world than we might ever understand. Sikes reminds us not to simply dig to unearth wickedness but to primarily keep looking upward and striving in the wake of the risen Lord. He does so without ever feeling too preachy, but his urgency is surely not lost, either.

Of course, there’s still a playfulness here, and the album has tinges of wide-eyed youth and adolescent scheming. When I first saw the demo for “New Attachment” drop, it didn’t even admittedly dawn on me that it was a song. Sikes’ commentary on the modern horrors of technology, his remark of entering into life with a “full heart and half [his] hands” and asking for God to reattach his extremities is such sharp wordplay, and it even manages to reinforce that the new heavens and earth are as much a physical place as the world we’re in now. “Hard to Tell” speaking of being crammed into a bathroom with other students like a sardine can at what I can only help but assume was a youth lock in. “To Wonder” speaks toward the glorious and captivating mysteries of Christ. Sikes is both confident in his views yet reveals to us childlike faith as he looks backward on his own life and forward through the lens of raising his family. Then, there’s the blissful group refrain on “One Hundredfold” which is as haunting as it is similarly-close to James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”. This is a record whose gravity extends from its levity.

The album is not without its weak points, however. While production as a whole is fully than ever before, it’s admittedly spotty at times. “To Wonder” is mixed far differently than “Back Into a Body”, which I discovered the hard way as Sikes’ vocals, amplified through bass boost on my car speaker, towered over everything else. The shifts between more sparse numbers and full-band arrangements certainly adds complexity to the process, and it’s clear that some tracks were treated differently than others. I also can’t help but feel like the intro for “To Wonder” ends abruptly after the keys enter in. There’s the spark of new energy that gets quenched before it has time to really reach its full strength. Now, the intro itself isn’t exactly short as a whole but this transition feels like an abrupt end.

Ultimately, it’d be unfair to try to rank In Your Field against No Creature Is Hidden. Both records excel in specific ways, with the latter carrying a bit more consistent energy and lusher arrangements and the former showcasing a stronger lyrical throughline and a greater degree of experimentation. The latter is a reflection on a macro scale; the former is more myopic, focused of what’s in front of us. The latter has one-line zingers against heretics, and the former gives us words of reflection in our daily lives. This surely is a bit of an oversimplification, but it’s the simplest way to highlight the differences. All the standard Former Ruins elements are there, albeit in different proportions, and the songwriting just keeps getting better. If you’ve somehow slept on Former Ruins thus far, now is as good a time as any to see what the fuss is about.