The unlikely New Zealand-Sup Pop connection just keeps getting stronger. First, the label that once brought you Mudhoney’s Superfuzz/Bigmuff and doom/drone masterpiece, Earth 2, went and signed Wellington funny men Flight of the Conchords, and now they’ve added Ryan McPhun, aka Ruby Suns, to their kiwi contingent. It’s not totally out of the blue, Sup Pop distributed McPhun’s old group, The Brunettes, in the US and McPhun is fond of comparing the port city vibe of his home in Auckland to Seattle. But for someone like me, who is only aware of New Zealand because of its large Hobbit population, it’s still strange.
And to make it odder, jet setting business deals are the last thing I think about when listening to the bands’ insular electro-pop. Ruby Suns’s latest LP, Fight Softly, is first and foremost a patient album. It takes McPhun’s angelic tenor almost 30 seconds to say the album’s first line, “It’s my turn in the front seat.” What becomes clear is that it’s less about the lyrics than the melodies’ slow motion grace. Same thing for the electronics—
synths buzz and claps clap, but the song doesn’t propel someone to dance as much as give them a stressball to slowly squeeze and contemplate. Fight Softly takes the explosive ingredients of dance music and diffuses them, forcing the listener to focus on their synthetic ripples.
I love “Cranberry,” the album’s strongest argument for aimless majesty. It starts with pitch-shifted whoops and beach boy harmonies, but you can feel gears shifting, and after a minute it launches into an island hopping, heart stopping pop melody. On a lesser album, a left turn like this might be distracting—or worse, shorthand for a lack of ideas. But McPhun’s sense for tonal shifts reminds me of Beck in his prime: Both artists find the rush of surprise and pleasure in awkward bounces.
McPhun has claimed that album standout, “Cinco,” is actually an angry song (about his frustration with housemates who tried to kick him out). But the song’s windswept world rhythm and synth marimbas aren’t exactly Mudhoney. Even in fury, Sup Pop’s McPhun is a gentle soul.
The Ruby Suns play Chop Suey this Thursday, April 8 (with Toro y Moi and Seattle’s USF)
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