Rubyhorse
““Rise””
(Island Records)
Rubyhorse is another one of those cheerfully motley outfits from Ireland who are just so shiny and happy and shimmery and full of life, dammit, that you want to collectively pick them up and squeeze the living shit out of them. Why are these Irish blokes so bloody happy all of the time anyways? Aren’t their fellow countrymen getting burned and bombed and forced to subsist on rotten produce and warm suds and little to no sunlight? So what’s the deal with the U2’s and the Corr’s’s and the Rubyhorses of the world? They should be sad and depressed and dark, dammit, not heaving pretty little hold-your-head-high ditties like “Sparkle” at us, a song with the sunny countenance of an afternoon spent sipping Pina Coladas in a Carribean tiki hut and none of the melancholy vitriol that one would expect from a band whose grew up wallowing in the crapulence of theUnited Kingdom. Wishy-washy fare like “Punchdrunk” does little to improve an album full of light pop garbage like the boppy “Any Day Now” and other similar throwaway radio tracks. But hey, they are opening for rock stalwarts Def Leppard, so at least they won’t be homesick for the limb-deprived losers with whom to share their sob stories and rainbow-colored dreams.
