Ariel Bui Disguised As Fate (10th Anniversary Edition) Love Note Collectables
“I also honour your suffering and pain, remembering only vaguely now the depths of your trauma and despair that seemed never ending. I want to tell you; your life will get better. You will have adventures and learn to set better boundaries, find stability and peace’’.
The quote above forms part of a memo on the inside sleeve of the album Disguised As Fate, written today by Bui to her younger self, in recognition of her arduous voyage from a coming of age teenager to the fulfilled young adult that she is today.
The tenth anniversary re-release of Ariel Bui’s debut album was celebrated on September 16th at The Fond Object in East Nashville, on the closing day of the Americana Festival. Disguised As Fate was written by Bui between the ages of 15 and 20 while she, as a consequence of her mother’s mental illness, lived in various parts of the US, often with other members of her family. Her parents had emigrated from Vietnam to the US at the end of the Vietnam War and growing up, particularly in the predominately white environment of Florida, was difficult for Bui, coupled with her mother’s illness.
Now a classically trained musician and graduate of Rollins College in Florida, the album is in many ways a diary of that often traumatic and stressful youth, all of which heavily influenced the album. Titles include The Stranger (“My love for you’s disguised as hate, So I can have someone to blame, For the fact that I couldn’t’make you love me’’), How It Should Be (“All our lives we spend afraid, Of the future we have made’’) and Change (“But one day, someone sweet will come my way, And I’ll keep him at bay, Because I am afraid’’). All point to a young lady openly questioning and attempting to come to terms with her predicament.
The album was co-produced by a close friend Dylan Ethier, who released it on his own Love Note Collectables label. Stripped back to the bare bones, the material essentially features Bui’s vocals and acoustic guitar, as she confronts the life issues she’s been dealt. The vulnerability and frailty in her vocals and lyrics are all too evident and, in many ways, recall a young Dolores O’Riordan.
Bui graduated from Rollins College in 2009 and abandoned the notion of a musical career, instead relocating to New Mexico, where she took up employment in a radically sustainable firm of architects and then worked for AmeriCorps’ Energy Conservation.Next, finding herself at a crossroads career wise, she was actively encouraged to revisit her musical vocation by friends who had recognised her unique and unclassifiable musical inventiveness. She subsequently settled in East Nashville and founded The Melodia Studio, which offers musical lessons to students of all ages, with the particular emphasis on ‘fun learning’.
The re-release of Disguised As Fate is much more than simply an album. It is a brave celebration of the resilience of a young woman, against all the odds in many instances, who has found her true vocation in life as an artist and musical educator. It’s not a Saturday night party listen and needs to be approached in the context of the intriguing backstory.
The memo quoted at the top of this review, in its totality, together with the poetic lyrics from this album, could fittingly be included in English Literature school curriculums for teenagers, by way of reassurance and awareness that difficult times do pass.