Bio The Ruby Suns

With his own new band, Ryan McPhun and The Ruby Suns, McPhun recorded and released his first album for NZ label Lil’ Chief Records and was picked up by Memphis Industries for release in 2006. By the time its follow-up, Sea Lion, was ready, the now foreshortened Ruby Suns had gained a college following in New Zealand and toured Australia with The Shins and the UK with Field Music before signing to Sub Pop in the US.  The album came out early 2008 and landed on various best-of lists that year.

And for a few summer months The Ruby Suns settled in Seattle where they played Sub Pop’s not-so-humble 20th anniversary festival and began work on third album Fight Softly. “Mingus and Pike” is about their temporary Victorian abode and its happy-go-lucky pit bull mascot Mingus; “Cranberry” captures a day trip to Cranberry Lake, a dream of a swimming-hole 90 minutes from Seattle on Fidalgo Island. The former is beat-buzzed bedroom R&B swathed in reverb while the latter is part tequila-drunk marching band, part Eastern Bloc candy rave.

‘Fight Softly’ is the third album for Memphis Industries. And Fight Softly is the kind of head-spinning combination of big-picture vision and sumptuous detail that only comes from an artist with an urgent need to express all the stuff he’s seen. And you can dance to it!