Playlouder - Music is the Network

As I put the The Ruby Suns CD into the hi-fi (it’s a dedicated device that only plays music only kids, its not even connected to the internet!!) on a grey windswept morning, overcome with a nagging sense of the pointlessness of everything that usually disappears around 11 o’clock, blinds down in semi darkness to deflect the confused stares and cheery whistling of the builders outside, I expected little from the world and less from the sounds that would presently emanate from the machine. However the CD turned out to be pretty good. Didn’t see that one coming did you? No.

Good why? Because it has a kind of skewed indie meets world music laid back vibe that with its fades and clicking in and out resembles nothing so much as a collection of field recordings taken by a visitor to some far-flung and constantly jubilant society who dance bathed in the red light of the setting sun in undiscovered sandy groves. Which is convenient because that’s what it kind of is, except the main guy is a well-travelled chap and the recordings are the products of his and his cohorts’ perceptions of said travelling experiences, taking in Polynesia, Kenya and Califonia, you dig?  They’re based in New Zealand, which as far as I can tell is basically the Garden of Eden, toured with The Shins in Australia, are on Sub Pop in America, and now its our turn.

The real stand out track is Remember, which ditches some of the more overt tribal drumming playfulness and is like being bathed in a sea of feeling and nostalgia, gentle washes that take you out of the minutiae of the everyday and consider where you are and where you’ve been, “Imagine yourself far away / looking back on what used to be / life before things had changed / into what they are now”. Simple enough lyrics but strangely effective in this context of strings, gently vibrating synths, a few Beatles-y parping horns and then a blissed out chorus of voices to finish. It’s a lonely traveller looking back on his movements his meetings and his current position, or a relationship that has changed inevitably from its first excited flushes as time has passed whether for good or bad, or its the end of care-free youth that has gone on for however long. A taking stock for a narrator who sees his past self enjoying the moment “without ever stopping to think ‘what am I doing’?”.

Elsewhere things sometimes drift by in an un-engagingly experimental manner, or on the flipside some of the pop tunes with their traditional musics can become dangerously twee- a cheery xylophone too many grates on the nerves, reminiscences of “camping and farewells” can add to the grating gap-year quotient. But the balance remains positive, if you’re a sucker for heartfelt Beach Boys-inspired tales of waking up sober on a beach that regress chronologically into a mushroom-addled 5 in the morning layering of many voices and then again to the start of a party that was seemingly 80s inspired in just the right way (Morning Sun). There are some great tracks here; you could almost call them… gems.