It's funny how music industry trends have changed over the last twenty-five years. A quarter of a century ago, for example, Sub Pop had a reputation for being the little label that helped launch grunge and, while their stable of artists has been getting more diverse since the departure of label co-founder Bruce Pavitt, the founding belief that guitar rock was golden held up for a really, really long time. Now though, in 2013, that founding tenet (as well as the label's creative direction in general) will be cast into question by The Ruby Suns and their sophomore Sub Pop release, Christopher.
Simply said, longtime supporters of Sub Pop will be shocked when they discover that no shadow of the names or echos of the sounds which helped to make the label an institution appear anywhere on Christopher. With an almost impenetrable wall of synths front-loaded onto “Desert Of Pop” (which opens the album) and a very fey, breathy vocal melody cresting on top of it, there is no question that Christopher is the work of a devout cadre of New Wave enthusiasts. Right from that moment, some listeners' spirits will begin to drop; those of us who didn't much like synthesizers when Duran Duran were making noise with them probably won't care about it now, and the collegiate punks who have been Sub Pop's bread and butter buying crew for years will be repulsed by it too. Still, some of those critics (like me, for example) will compulsively buckle themselves in for the experience – if only to remind themselves why they didn't like synths in the first place.
As soon as the skeptics are all in, that's when it happens. After listeners really let this “Desert Of Pop” pour over them, that's when they'll start hearing lyrics like “Anyone else would think I'm your cheerleader/ But it's all ended now – your album cycle's over” and the almost snide edge to them (which makes the song suddenly appear to be an indictment of the public's fickle nature when it comes to pop trends – not some trite new romantic MASH note) and realize that there may be more to The Ruby Suns than they first judged. True, they're shiny and seem vacuous on the surface, but even scratching lightly before that surface reveals a much smarter undercurrent.
Curious to know if the understated bite in “Desert Of Pop” was a fluke, listeners will be moved to venture further into this run-time – and what they'll find is a set of subversive gems which are more punk – more Sub Pop – in subject if not sound than anyone could expect. Little barbs which almost seem to taunt the concept of expectation before flipping it the bird are laced throughout the lyric sheets of songs like “In Real Life” (which proclaims, “Real life wasn't what I wanted/ What I wanted was a waste of time/ If time is money/ Then money is nothing”), “Dramatikk” (which utters the decidedly “un-Sub Pop” words, “I've had enough of your drama” like a battle cry), the petulant kiss-off of “Rush” (where singer Ryan McPhun states pretty plainly, “I don't need this anymore” before sweetly sighing, “You don't live here anymore”) and the ideal ode to drunken proclamations “Jump In” (where McPhun talks about that night when he wrote a letter in the dark but didn't read it before sending). In each case, the songs have a lot of potential and the only significant obstacle that listeners will have to try and overcome is the incredibly daunting style of each song; that oh-so-slick set of synths is very, very Eighties and so consistent and so consistent that it had to have been a sonic device utilized on purpose, but a lot of listeners will find that it really hobbles their ability to get into this album. Even with that said though, there's no doubt that Christopher could find an audience – just that it will be a fraction of its potential size. If they set more lyrics of the caliber that appears on Christopher against a more accessible backdrop (read: less anachronistic) on a future release, then The Ruby Suns may really have something. Will that ever happen? Probably not, so those who really want to get an idea of how subversive this music is will have to either like/miss New Wave, or be able to look past the trappings of new wave which dominate Christopher and revel in the dark potential that resides just below the surface in it.
Artist:
www.myspace.com/therubysuns
www.facebook.com/therubysuns
www.twitter.com/therubysuns
www.subpop.com/artists/the_ruby_suns
Download:
The Ruby Suns – Christopher – “Kingfisher Call Me” – [mp3]
Album:
The Ruby Suns' album Christopher will be released on January 29, 2013 via Sub Pop Records. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
