'Fight Softly' is the third album by New Zealand's pop masters The Ruby Suns. Ryan McPhun (their prime mover) has the kind of voracious musical mind that cites as equal influences '80s/'90s New Jack Swing and modern Angolan kuduro, Fleetwood Mac and Britney Spears, Brazilian tropicalia and Argentinean cumbia. He's the kind of diligent, meticulous soul that spends days hunched over a laptop in a tiny rented studio in Auckland, NZ just to perfect a sequenced drum track (mission accomplished). 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!
California-born (and NZ citizen) McPhun took childhood trips to New Zealand and finally made Auckland home in 2003. Though he soon started playing with Kiwi indie darlings The Brunettes, he'd been making his own music for years—four-track bedroom stuff that mixed his faraway vocals with effects-laden guitar, synths, and all manner of field-recorded samples. With his own new band, Ryan McPhun and The Ruby Suns, McPhun recorded and released his first album for NZ label Lil' Chief Records. By the time its follow-up, Sea Lion, was ready, the foreshortened Ruby Suns had gained a college following in New Zealand and toured Australia with The Shins and the UK with Field Music, among others. The album came out on Sub Pop in early 2008 and landed on various best-of lists that year.
And for a few summer months The Ruby Suns landed in Seattle. There they played Sub Pop's not-so-humble 20th anniversary festival and began work on 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.
In the spring of '09, The Ruby Suns took a whirlwind tour of Europe that included 10 days at a friend's spread outside Szeged, Hungary. McPhun and friends Bevan Smith (Signer, Aspen, Skallander) and Matthew Mitchell (Skallander, Muriel Tsains) spent their time devouring veggie pizzas and jamming, improv-style, in an old farmhouse. These sessions didn't make it to Fight Softly as-is but were a springboard into new ideas McPhun brought back to his Auckland studio.
Like "Closet Astrologer," a song that started in Hungary and concluded, vaporous and Vangelis-like, in New Zealand. Or "How Kids Fail," a multi-movement epic that sounds like a post-techno hymn and nods to How Children Fail, John Holt's groundbreaking book on the general out-of-touch-ness of the public education system. "Haunted House" bounces on a pitch-shifted vocal sample and bubbly synth line,
simultaneously lush and minimal. "Cinco" and "Dusty Fruit" share a similar digital-tropical soul.
This is where Fight Softly veers from the path set by its predecessor. Thematically, it's not as wide-eyed or lighthearted, 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, not many guitars strummed or basses plucked. McPhun's soulful upper-register croon, swallowed into the mix, replaces group chants and full-throated singalongs. Rather than an album of clearly-drawn influences, Fight Softly is a unique, inscrutable synthesis, more itself than anything else.
Rush
The Ruby Suns Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I won’t be waiting anymore
You’ve got a child to work on
And I’m in vibe so I don’t need this anymore
You’re far side of that open doorway
But you don’t live here anymore
You and me
To feel it fading as your love
You’re far side of that open doorway
But you don’t live here anymore
Lately, in my dreams
I’m getting left behind
We’re always back in time
Waiting for this
But I’m standing confused, I
Relocate as I
It’s feeling I thought for remember
In the middle of where I’m living
What it feels now to be another
You’re far side of that open doorway
But you don’t live here anymore
Ao you wait, fuckin' doorway
I don’t feel it anymore
You’re far side of that open doorway
But you don’t live here anymore
The Ruby Suns' "Rush" is a song about overcoming heartbreak and moving on from a relationship that has ended. The singer of the song has realized that they were waiting for their former partner to come back, but they have now decided to stop waiting and move on. The lyric "I’m not waiting anymore, I won’t be waiting anymore" expresses this sentiment of letting go and moving forward.
The singer acknowledges that their ex-partner has a child to focus on, and they have different priorities now. The phrase "You’ve got a child to work on" suggests that the singer understands that their ex needs to focus on their family, and they need to prioritize themselves as well. The line "And I’m in vibe so I don’t need this anymore" indicates that the singer is at a different point in their life, and they no longer need to hold onto this past relationship.
The chorus of the song repeats the phrase "You’re far side of that open doorway, but you don’t live here anymore" several times. This line drives home the fact that the relationship is over, and the singer's ex-partner is no longer a part of their life. The second verse of the song contains the line "Lately, in my dreams, I’m getting left behind, we’re always back in time, waiting for this." Here, the singer is expressing the frustration they feel when they dream about their ex-partner and are brought back to the past. However, they assert their own agency by saying "But I’m standing confused, I relocate as I," suggesting that they will not let themselves be stagnant and will continue to move forward.
Line by Line Meaning
I’m not waiting anymore
I'm tired of waiting for things to change.
I won’t be waiting anymore
I've made up my mind to stop waiting.
You’ve got a child to work on
You have bigger responsibilities to focus on.
And I’m in vibe so I don’t need this anymore
I'm in a good place in my life and don't need this negative energy.
You’re far side of that open doorway
You are distant and unattainable.
But you don’t live here anymore
You've moved on from this relationship and this place.
You and me
The two of us.
Didn’t want that evil getting back
We didn't want negative things to resurface in our relationship.
To feel it fading as your love
To feel the love between us fading away.
Lately, in my dreams
Recently, in my dreams.
I’m getting left behind
I feel like I'm being left behind in life.
We’re always back in time
We keep going back in time in our dreams.
Waiting for this
Anticipating something to happen.
But I’m standing confused, I
I'm feeling lost and uncertain.
Relocate as I
I try to move on and start over.
It’s feeling I thought for remember
It's a feeling I thought I had forgotten.
In the middle of where I’m living
In the midst of my current life situation.
What it feels now to be another
What it feels like to be someone new or different.
Ao you wait, fuckin' doorway
You stay there, in that distant place that I cannot reach.
I don’t feel it anymore
I don't feel the same about our relationship anymore.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: Lisa Lærum Åslund, Ryan Williamm McPhun
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind