Rubies - Explode From The Center (CD)

All Music Guide

A light and breezy trifle of a debut album, Explode From The Center belies its swollen, attentiongrabbing guest list including members of Kings of Convenience, The Concretes, and (most notably) Feist, among a couple dozen others with a consistently relaxed, unassuming vibe. Rubies enlist most of those folks to sing and/or play guitar, and there is certainly plenty of pretty singing and guitar playing on this record, though few listeners will be bothered to figure out exactly who's doing what. Core members Simone Rubi and Terri Loewenthal are fine singers themselves, but their mellifluous voices do work especially well blended together and with others, as amply demonstrated in their days with Call and Response, a sort of latterday Mamas and the Papas for the indiepop set. Explode does a good job of carrying forward that band's latesixties, latesummer California aesthetic (never mind that most of the album was recorded in Scandinavia), adding occasional electronic flourishes, although ...the gentler, folkier numbers tend to come off better than the wouldbe dance jams. "I Feel Electric," the Feistfeaturing lead single, is actually one of the least successful moments on the album, its insistently bouncy sorethumb synthdisco sounding stilted and overdetermined by comparison to the surrounding material, although mediocre lyrics and a negligible chorus hook don't help matters either. The less blatantly danceoriented "Stand in a Line," with a twitchy low synth part and scratchy guitarwork courtesy of exbandmate Dan "Sorceror" Judd, fares a bit better, as does chunky pop of "Diamonds on Fire," but the most satisfying grooves here are those mellow enough to feel like organic frameworks over which the songs the dreamy, stringswathed "Signs of Love"; the languidly funky "Room Without a Key" are lazily, casually draped. The remaining tracks, including the Donovan cover "Turquoise," are even more leisurely and relaxed, with a wistfulness verging on melancholy that's both luxurious and insubstantial, dissipating sweetly as soon as they end. Rubies' friendship with Leslie Feist makes a lot of sense, as they mine the same vein of sophisticated, folky pop with which Feist struck gold on in particular The Reminder (whose cover, incidentally, was designed by Rubi) and Feist fans will find a lot to enjoy here, although Rubies' actual songs make less of an impression than their overall sound. There's nothing especially wrong with that it just means this is an album better suited for soundtracking laidback summer afternoons than for focused, introspective close listening. - K. Ross Hoffman, All Music Guide Read more Less