The Ruby Suns – “Fight Softly”
Sub Pop
-out tomorrow!
4 / 5
Open this new pop/ psychedelia release and just feel it fizz with freshness and glimmer. With a sound as chromatic and vibrant as their latest cover, New Zealand’s Ruby Suns exude a fondness for Animal Collective electronica and layering, while keeping clean, crisp, focused melody and vocals. “Mingus and Pike” sway with 80s-era synth and percussion, creating a soft, full sound that entrances, melodically darts to and fro like a minnow; “Why Kids Fail” is a highlight of a different color, one more earthy and weightier, combining a video-game style hook with driving drums. There is immediacy, instantaneous and sustained gratification in their joyful choruses, and a shimmering brightness to the album as a whole. “Fight Softly” plays as if it were a shaft of light cleft by a prism: singular in focus, and containing kaleidoscopic colors and textures. The only complaint one could fashion is that it isn’t weighty enough material, and that might cut down just a few of the spins this material deserves; but this is joyous music, and joyous music at its most vibrant. Recommended.
Listen to: “Cranberry”: www.myspace.com/453173424