Fight Softly

The Ruby Suns are a New Zealand band led by Ryan McPhun, a Californian globetrotter and fan of the Beach Boys, psychedelia and world music, who moved to Auckland in 2004.

Two years after releasing Sea Lion, the group brings us their latest work, Fight Softly, a new helping of their particular brand of indie pop, mixing styles ranging from African and Polynesian folk to flamenco and 80s synth-pop with elements of electronica and tropicalia.

Ryan McPhun has literally travelled around the world to arrive at Fight Softly, the band's third album. McPhun possesses (or is possessed by) a voracious musical mind that results in a unique combination of big-picture vision and sumptuous detail that only comes from an artist with an urgent need to express everything he has seen. And you can dance to it!

Fight Softly veers from the path set by its predecessor, Sea Lion. Thematically, it's not as wide-eyed or light-hearted, picking apart the relationships faced as we pass through the world, with our surroundings, each other, ourselves. Sonically, it remains as beat-centric, though these beats are deliciously artificial, stretched and compacted and distorted beyond recognition. Melodies are scuzzy and digital, no guitars strummed or basses plucked. McPhun's soulful upper-register croon, swallowed into the mix, replaces group chants and full-throated sing-alongs.

www.myspace.com/therubysuns
www.therubysuns.com