Possible Films

The Ryful Album

In 1995, Hal Hartley invited three musician friends from drastically different quarters of the contemporary rock scene to collaborate with him on some songs. For about a month they were a band called Ryful – a play on Hartley’s film-scoring pseudonym, “Ned Rifle”.

It was an odd mix: Hub Moore, an accomplished singer/songwriter whose pop/rock ballads had driven some of Hartley’s earlier films like Trust (1990) and Surviving Desire (1991); Lydia Kavanagh, one time member of The Golden Palominos, had performed the ethereal, choir-like  cadences for Hartley’s film Amateur (1994); and Jim Coleman, who made the opening tune for Hartley’s debut The Unbelievable Truth (1989) was the keyboardist and sample-king for the legendary thrash Metal outfit Cop Shoot Cop. Finally, they were joined by session drummer Bill Dobrow and recorded the album in five days.

Apart from the songs they developed together from scratch, the album includes renditions of Lydia Kavanagh’s beautifully haunting, King Of Boys, and Hub Moore’s resolute and yearning hymn, If I Could.

Six of these nine songs found places in Hartley’s movies Henry Fool and The Book of Life. But three have never been released until now: I Lost It, Complaint #36, and Finally.

Track List:
1. Often (3:42) Hartley / Coleman
2. If I Could (3:51) Hartley / Moore
3. Fugitive (3:30) Hartley / Coleman
4. I Lost It (3:31) Hartley / Moore
5. King Of Boys (4:04) Kavanagh
6. Finally (3:16) Hartley
7. Not Me (3:31) Hartley / Coleman
8. Gigolo (3:19) Hartley
9. Complaint #36 (3:20) Hartley / Moore

Hal Hartley – guitar, keyboards
Hub Moore – guitar, bass, vocals
Lydia Kavanagh – guitar, bass, vocals
Jim Coleman – keyboards, sampling
Bill Dobrow – drums