Roisin Murphy, Ruby Blue
One of the great art-pop albums of its era
The life of this debut album from the singing half of dance-pop duo Moloko is a perfect example of how the music business has changed in the internet era. Initially released in 2005, Ruby Blue bombed commercially, confusing fans of Moloko club anthems like "Sing It Back" and lacking a hit single. Thankfully for the Irish chanteuse, television producers disagreed, with four of the album's tracks backdropping the drama in the second season of Grey's Anatomy. The album's fortunes were then truly revived by internet word-of-mouth, as choreographed routines to "Ramalama (Bang Bang)," "Night of the Dancing Flame" and the title track, plucked from reality show So You Think You Can Dance and MTV Italy talk show Very Victoria, became cult YouTube hits.
So… what did TV cool-hunters and web crawlers hear in Ruby Blue that radio and club DJs didn't? The answer is a visionary take on dance-pop, with Murphy's soulful, Annie Lennox-esque vocals wedded to the brassy, ebullient art-funk backdrops of leftfield jazz producer Matthew Herbert. In should-have-been-huge single "Sow Into You," for example, a joyous love song is made out of disco, techno, Earth Wind & Fire-standard horns and multi-tracked Murphys teasing the sweetest counter melodies out of a stunning update of early ’80s electro-soul in the D-Train/Peech Boys mould. By the time last year's disco-dominated and more successful follow-up album Overpowered had arrived, early ’80s dance sounds were de rigeur. Ruby Blue was both a couple of years ahead of its time, and a little too experimental to find favour with 2005's mainstream audience.
Herbert is fond of unusual instruments, encouraging Murphy to sing while hitting everything from hair-sprays to dulcimers and then fitting them within dense textures where traditional song structure gives way to something far less predictable. Fuzz guitar or deep funk bass or thundering tribal beats rear out of the mix, giving edge to Murphy's elliptical takes on the perennial subjects of life, love and sex, inspired by her relationships with Moloko partner Mark Brydon and Ruby Blue sleeve artist Simon Henwood.
Moloko's downfall was a lack of connection between the jazz-flecked experiment of their albums and the pure disco of their hit singles. On Ruby Blue, Murphy and Herbert succeed in forging that connection between head and body music, and the resulting dayglo noise stands as one of the great art-pop albums of its era.
