Tuesday Is For Tunes: The Ruby Suns

So, this week’s installment of Tuesday Is For Tunes features The Ruby Suns, and is proudly brought to you by the last of my paycheck. Fight Softly, the new album from the The Ruby Suns that I’ve been keenly anticipating, released today. I used my lunch break to run around the corner to the local record store to pick up a copy along with a ticket to their USA release tour with Toro Y Moi. I now have only $30 to get me through to payday, but it was completely worth it. The diversity and complexity of the aural textures on this album is just what my ears needed.

Ryan McPhun, founder and frontman of The Ruby Suns, must be a music nerd of the highest caliber. The range of influences on this album are staggeringly astounding, including 80s pop and tropicalia. Calypso beat drum tracks blasted to dissonance with distortion flirt with synths freshly bathed in reverb to the serenade of McPhun's misty vocals. The end result is Fight Softly, a cohesive symphony of sounds made by The Ruby Suns to make you think and dance simultaneously. As these are two of my favorite pastimes, I wholeheartedly approve.

At the moment, tracks two, four, and eight have a bit of a monopoly on my attention and devotion. Track four: Cranberry has been floating around the interwebs as a single for awhile now, and it's the song that initially got me excited for this album. It's full of sunny, spinning beats that fade in and out, and fill me with hope for a hedonistic summer of nonstop shaking hips and happening times. Track two: Mingus and Pike is a little slower, shimmering with reverberating, spaced out sounds. The bridge has sample of a man speaking, fuzzed out of recognition, that has really snagged on my brain. I can't stop thinking about it. It's just so perfectly worked in. Lastly, track eight: Dusty Fruit opens with a deliciously catchy refrain that's allowed to set in for just the right amount of time before a calypso beat kicks up so infectiously that I dare you to hold still while hearing it.

However, my love for these particular tracks shouldn't detract from the album as a whole. Fight Softly is a complete album that was clearly made with a good deal of conscientious thought and passion for music. You can listen to it in its entirety, and thoroughly enjoy each song. I cannot wait to see The Ruby Suns live with Toro Y Moi. I will dance until my proverbial pants fall off with a ridiculous grin on my face the whole time.

Summation: The Ruby Suns make me want to throw a summer afternoon picnic at a state park or beach that climaxes to a dance party under the stars as dusk fades to dark with Fight Softly playing on repeat. It's both sexy and exciting.