Send "The Ruby Suns " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Allmusic |
 When you’re the only permanent member of a band, you reserve the right to dismiss your previous lineup and record an entire album by your lonesome. Such is the case with Ryan McPhun, whose third album under the Ruby Suns moniker is essentially a solo effort. Written, performed, and produced by the frontman himself, Fight Softly replaces the tropical flair of 2008’s Sea Lion with synthesizers and digital production. It’s the sound of a man and his computer, and any organic instruments that may have made the final cut are poked, prodded, and processed beyond recognition, resulting in electro-Afro soundscapes that have more in common with Animal Collective than the tribal folk of McPhun’s previous material. Yet despite the gadgetry that went into the album’s production, Fight Softly is still a sunny piece of work, filled with gorgeous pop melodies that are complex but rarely challenging. Like Le Loup’s Family or Yeasayer’s Odd Blood, it’s too different from the album that preceded it to warrant any real comparisons -- instead, it serves as a widening of the band’s catalog, a sign that Ryan McPhun can stretch his boundaries without sacrificing the melodies that have consistently rooted his songwriting....full text |
| Bbc |
| Last year’s Animal Collective ascent took many by surprise. Sure, the band had delivered their most accessible album to date with the year-end-list-topping Merriweather Post Pavilion, but such was the group’s cult status that their crossing over into mainstream markets – daytime radio plays, festival headline slots – was a relative revelation. Ryan McPhun-led New Zealanders The Ruby Suns could well follow the Americans’ lead with Fight Softly. Admirably accomplished though the band’s previous long-players have been – 2008’s Sea Lion was particularly special, a candy-coated cornucopia of tropical sounds, addictive melodies and indie sensibilities – Fight Softly is, while not a game-changer, certainly a level-raiser. It glistens with pop immediacy, rollicks with breathtaking percussive interpositions, and clatters to a beat entirely of its own construct. Elements familiar to fans of F*** Buttons, Vampire Weekend, The Very Best and the aforementioned Merriweather-makers are present, but the assembly here is inspired....full text |
| Nytimes |
| Onstage, Galactic is a New Orleans funk band that jams through marathon dance medleys. On its albums, it’s becoming something else: a studio outfit, still funky, that merges hand-played, sampled and programmed tracks and that doubles as a tour guide. “Ya-Ka-May” (Epitaph) is named after a Chinese-derived noodle soup that the locals use for a hangover cure, and it traverses the city’s music in three-minute chunks featuring many luminaries, among them Allen Toussaint, the Rebirth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty and Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias. Longtime R&B figures get smart, brittle electronic makeovers — notably Irma Thomas, in real time and sampled, singing the soulful, bitter “Heart of Steel.” The album also gives wider exposure to New Orleans bounce, the booty-shaking hip-hop variation that arose in the 1990s, and its subset, called sissy bounce, as performed with raunchy gusto by drag queens like Sissy Nobby and Big Freedia and the transsexual Katey Red. Galactic’s cyber-savvy New Orleans funk remembers the past but stays hardheaded about the future. Meaghan Smith The Canadian songwriter Meaghan Smith shrugs off heartbreak, again and again, on her debut album, “The Cricket’s Orchestra” (Sire). Her songs are wry and retro, with wordplay harking back to Tin Pan Alley’s heyday: “This stupid heart, this foolish thing/Failed me from the start, keeps malfunctioning,” she coos in “Heartbroken,” as her airy voice belies the lyrics. She often uses swing rhythms and arrangements that can sound as if they were recorded for 78-r.p.m. discs, with big-band horns or hazy strings. Now and then she tosses in an anachronism — turntable scratching, electronic twinkles — to make clear she’s not nostalgic, only testing herself against past eras’ craftsmanship. And for every breakup she sings about, she’s resilient; in “Take Me Dancing,” she offers, “Let’s go make a final mistake/Mess me up for old times’ sake.”...full text |
The Ruby Suns lyrics
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