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Yet despite the gadgetry that went into the album’s production, Fight Softly is still a sunny piece of work, filled with gorgeous pop melodies that are complex but rarely challenging.
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Fight Softly is, while not a game-changer, certainly a level-raiser. It glistens with pop immediacy, rollicks with breathtaking percussive interpositions, and clatters to a beat entirely of its own construct.
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The endless experimentation can grate but ‘Fight Softly’ is a bold attempt to further stretch pop music.
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While rarely graceless and often impressive (“Two Humans,” worth noting, develops into something sexy before going for broke), everything on Fight Softly just seems too much. There’s a lot that’s pretty here--but there’s a lot.
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Surprisingly enough, it lacks a strong sense of focus (something the creative basking of Sea Lion honed in on) and for all of its elements of sweeping grandiosity, they never seem to have much of a purpose.
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Fight Softly isn’t in the same league as Clouds Taste Metallic however, which, let’s face it, is among the very faintest of criticisms, but the fact remains that it is slightly hit and miss in places.
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Vocalist Ryan McPhun deftly walks the line between embarassing naivete and calculation.
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MojoWhile he's putting love into these rippling, galloping beats, the vocal melodies get a little samey. [Apr 2010, p.103]
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It's a true departure in sound and method; this is not a lazy or complacent record. McPhun, though, never settles into these new sounds, and Fight Softly retains very little of the ease and abandon that, to date, had marked the Ruby Suns.
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While hardly acting as a complete departure from previous efforts, the Ruby Suns’ third outing regrettably cuts itself off at the knees too often to be considered either progressive or a total success.
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With Fight Softly they seem so out of sync, so bland and so disappointing.
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Q MagazineIt may lack enough heavy hitters to equal the sucess of "Merriweather Post Pavilion," yet the aptly named McPhun has created a Technicolor, synapse-tickling delight. [Apr 2010, p.119]
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While their third album, Fight Softly, hasn't quite hit on anything new under the shimmering pop sun, it's a capable display of borrowing and synthesizing that should help to differentiate the Suns from complacent trend-followers who draw on similar influences.
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In the end, Fight Softly is one of those crossover records that doesn’t have to compromise much to appeal to everyone.
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With sounds plucked from here, there and everywhere, it's an ambitious collection, but singer Ryan McPhun's gentle voice lends this second album by the Kiwis a beautiful tone.
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Words tend to be swallowed in the mix, but what floats through hints at memories and self-searching: a carnival of introspection.
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UncutLovely, life-affirming stuff. [Apr 2010, p.97]
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Under The RadarFight Softly melds simple, fun pop with colorful foreign tones and demonstrate The Ruby Suns' unique and facinating approach to world-pop. [Winter 2010, p.65]
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But for all the labels and feelings the album conjures and provokes, Fight Softly ends up sounding like a bunch of beats and blips gesticulating wildly instead of a cohesive body of melodies and songs.