“It does get a bit annoying, especially because some of the songs on the first album sound nothing like The Beach Boys. Why can’t reviewers focus on those? But of course, most people take the easy way out and don’t want to think of new things to say. I’d say about 70 per cent of all the reviews have been almost exactly the same.”

Ryan McPhun, speaking out about the tendency for reviewers to compare The Ruby Suns to The Beach Boys (read it here)

Undoubtedly Ryan McPhun of the Ruby Suns has grown weary of the constant Beach Boys references that fixate themselves like mosquitoes to sun virgins when critics discuss his band. Sure, all bands have their influences, but it is the goal of any artist – particularly one as talented and commercially as uncompromised as songwriter McPhun – to be deemed individual and to be adjudged by their own standards, not the precedent of an act whose prime was 40 years their prior.

Maybe it is just the maturation of an artist and his band, maybe it was a response to the Wilson-esque tag or maybe that’s just what naturally happens to a songwriter during the years and experiences between albums, whatever the reason, Sea Lion, The Ruby Suns’ second album, firmly sends this Beach Boys shadow out to sea.

Taken as a whole Sea Lion continues much of what makes The Ruby Suns so notable in the first place. The exotic flavour of McPhun’s pop songwriting remains, it not only aided but propelled by dense arrangements and a willingness to avoid the verse-chorus cycle that typifies pop music. Furthermore, the harmonies that were at the centre of the Wilson comparisons are as prominent as ever, all of this buoyed by the band’s unwavering commitment to a DIY recording aesthetic. But underneath these core traits there blossoms an increased reliance on natural instrumentation, an expansion of the band’s already tropical sound and a confidence to further deviate from both song structures and the supposed duty of standalone tracks to sit divided across the span of an album.

Opening with the atypically eerie ‘Blue Penguin’, field recordings play out against a backdrop of swells and drones before the more familiar Haitian laze that defines the tropical element of The Ruby Suns settles in. At a base level the tracks following, ‘Oh, Mojave’ and first single ‘Tane Mahuta’, both sound like expected evolutions from the band’s debut. However, with McPhun’s songwriting, evocative melodies and anything-goes structures are nearly a given, the more rollicking pace and group vocals of these tracks being more definitive factors of the group’s new sound.

Once established Sea Lion’s tropical locale is rarely shaken; the deviations surrounding it are measured and the album never departs too far from the open plains and naturalistic environs that spring so readily to mind when hearing the music of The Ruby Suns. Even more choral compositions like ‘It’s Mwangi in Front of Me’ and the instrumental opening of ‘Blue Penguins’ have an indelibly natural quality. The one reprieve from this earthy MO is provided in the last half of the album’s final song, with a pre-programmed drum beat driving an electro pop song that harks back to ‘80s cheese pop rather than the more revered ‘60s influences (this end interlude is perhaps also a slight nod to recent albums from band favourite Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal).

In fact if there has to be some kind of common day reference to help those unfamiliar with the charms of this New Zealand band it should lean towards the ethos of an act as sprawling, and, at times as magnificent, as Animal Collective. Both band’s share a near magician’s touch in making unconventional melodies contagious and rhythmic interplay seem natural; both use layers and group dynamics to elevate songs and now with Sea Lion, both have the demonstrated ability to be innovative and widely understood.

But to saddle Ryan McPhun and his bandmates with another comparison seems cruel and unnecessary. With Sea Lion, The Ruby Suns have proved that they are a great, progressive pop band, one more than capable of standing staunchly on their own two feet.