Ryan McPhun admits within the first minute of the Ruby Suns' new album, Christopher, that he's always falling in love. It's hard to dispute, since he spends the rest of "Desert of Pop" enumerating ways to relate the feeling: He's "like a birthday boy, giddy and excited" over someone or something that hits him like "a single malt, pure agave tequila." The good stuff, y'know? But there's one line that doesn't sit quite right: "You are [a] cold glass of water in the desert of pop." I'm almost positive he's referencing pop music, but he does leave open the slightest possibility that it's a reference to soda. It sounds farfetched, but while "Desert of Pop" clearly describes being struck dumb by a singer, a song, or a combination of the two, why would McPhun describe pop as an arid wasteland when the spiffy synth hits and hi-NRG dance beats make it abundantly clear that the Ruby Suns want you to view Christopher as their entry into splashy chart pop? Maybe they're not sure either, as Christopher dives in headfirst and just as quickly heads back to the surface.
Perhaps McPhun feels self-conscious about this change of heart, as he confesses about his situation, "Anyone else would think I'm your cheerleader." While becoming a pop evangelist relatively late in life can generally be healthy, at least as an acknowledgement that wholly rejecting pop music can be just as narrow-minded as wholly accepting it, it's particularly dangerous in the hands of musicians who haven't really shown much of an ear for it previously. Most often, it just results in enthusiastic overcompensation; you can look to fellow Indie Class of 2008 overachievers Ra Ra Riot neglecting nearly all of their strengths to go electronic on their new LP, Beta Love, and hopefully this can be the last time we ever have to mention POP ETC.
While Christopher undoubtedly comes on strong, the Ruby Suns sound undeniably invigorated here. For one thing, they end up discovering new strengths, as this kind of effusive sound fits McPhun's extroverted (and occasionally cloying) lyrics, and his vocals turn out to be more melodically inclined than he's let on to this point. It also gives the Ruby Suns a sense of direction that was previously missing from the sunny, island-hopping indie pop sampler of Sea Lion and Fight Softly's hesitant purveyance of post-chillwave synth murk. After McPhun's opening devotional, the equally headspun "In Real Life" elaborates on a lyric from "Desert of Pop"-- and its sound as well, resulting in what feels like a smartly constructed medley. Having given himself over, McPhun admits, "Real life wasn't what I wanted/ What I wanted was a waste of time," opting instead for an untenable existence where you drink the days away, completely free from the worries of money. Far more common than the getaways evoked on Sea Lion, yet the escapism is every bit as intoxicating.
But from there on out, McPhun gets real with us-- in particular, "Kingfisher Call Me" shows empathy for a misunderstood friend suffering through what he calls a "psychological high school." The balance of Christopher is addressed to people suffering from very specific kinds of teen angst. "Dramatikk" resembles the starstruck and spangled balladry of Autre Ne Veut, and consoles a friend experiencing a breakup; as you could probably tell from the title "Futon Fortress", its narrator can't even get out of bed but appears to be okay with that. "Boy" is a pep talk ("Do you hide in your room/ Away from dad/ To revel in your baseball card collection?") and also a quasi revenge fantasy, assuring a lonely kid that his foes "will turn out losers in the end." It reads embarrassing, but these are the sort of unruly feelings that Capital-P pop helps people understand and even appreciate.
Yet the Ruby Suns quickly lose their nerve and hooks about halfway through Christopher, and it simply becomes a brighter, albeit favorable, take on Fight Softly's mushier innards, only roused by a strange key change during "Starlight" and when they bring out the defibrillators for the closer, "Heart Attack". The dissonance between the docile synth pop and unbridled urges maxes out on would-be cornerstone "Jump In". The title is once again a demonstrative one, as McPhun aspires to live a life free of fears and inhibitions, centering around the lyric, "When you reach the end of the world/ Don't wanna have no regrets." By the time it's over, he's asked about your underwear (really), got involved in a mutual striptease, written a letter to a crush, and sent it without proofreading. Christopher is certainly a welcome call to action from a band who could previously have been cast off as amiable roustabouts. The shame is that, from a musical standpoint, Christopher is too often a result of Ruby Suns failing to take their own advice.
