On their third album, Los Angeles-by-way-of-Scunthorpe, England duo
Ruen Brothers conjure a widescreen atmosphere of 1950s noir and Western imagery that's given an even further twist with their bold contemporary pop accents. It's a cinematic vibe that the real-life siblings -- lead singer/guitarist
Henry Stansall and singer/instrumentalist
Rupert Stansall -- first introduced on their 2018
Rick Rubin-produced debut,
All My Shades of Blue, and further expanded on the follow-up,
Ultramodern. But where their first album felt like an attempt at making an unabashed
Roy Orbison production,
Ultramodern (whose title was both a cheeky reference to the postwar '50s obsession with modernism and a winky nod to the pair's own anachronistic influences) found them incorporating a synthy, contemporary pop aesthetic into their sound. On
Ten Paces, they split the difference, digging deeper into their '50s-inspired sound while also crafting pop hooks that wouldn't sound out of place on a record by
the Killers. Conceptually,
Ten Paces is built upon a conscious mix of film noir and cowboy Western tropes, and cuts like "Slow Draw," "Bullet Blues," and "Hi-Yo" find the duo transforming the pulpy themes into catchy, metaphorical pop anthems. They explicitly highlight the concept on the romantic "Don't Know What's Come Over You," singing "Like a sci-fi dream/Or a story in the west/That I don't wanna see/Though I wanna know the end." Vocally, singer
Henry Stansall's wavering, hardboiled
Willie Nelson croon is a perfect fit for this type of stylized pop, ably straddling the matinee idol line between
Chris Isaak and
Bryan Ferry. There's also a shadowy sense of paranoia running through the album, as in "The Fear," where
Stansall yearns for his lover's embrace, singing "And I'm comfy in my bed/Comfy in my home/You can rock my twilight zone." With
Ten Paces,
Ruen Brothers have crafted an album caught between the dream of a '50s pulp past and the harsh light of the present, one that lives in its own pop twilight zone. ~ Matt Collar
