“I don’t speak their lan-guage/I don’t even try,” Ryan McPhun sings on “Pram Gangs.” He’s reacting to fatherhood and feeling alienated from fellow parents pushing strollers. Alienation is a subtext to Sprite Fountain, the fifth Ruby Suns album. In the four years since Christopher, McPhun relocated from his native New Zealand to Oslo, Norway, started a family and settled into his one-man-band recording. With its Beach Boys harmonies and overstuffed arrangements, Sprite Fountain seems like a throwback to the days of the Elephant 6 collective and bands like Olivia Tremor Control and early Of Montreal. Songs such as “Gatrapa” and “Tilt Of His Hat” have a bright surface—vocals that ooh and ahh amid chipper melodies—but a manic disposition seethes throughout the album, with unstable arrangements that shift among frenetic drums, plucky strings and squelchy synths. It’s a dizzying, hyperactive record, as unsettled as it is sunny.
—Steve Klinge
