Sinking the Eight Ball is debut album by Ruby Joe

Ruby Joe

Ruby Joe was a Christian band from Ventura, California. Their debut album was cited as psychobilly, but their second played squarely as swing revival due to the appearance of the horn section of Royal Crown Revue. Both were released on Sub•Lime Records, in 1998 and 1999...

. Due to its topical content, the album was pulled from some Christian book stores.

The album drew upon the production talents of Mike Knott and Gene Eugene

Gene Eugene

Gene "Eugene" Andrusco was a Canadian born actor, record producer, engineer, composer and musician. Andrusco was best known as the leader of the funk/rock band Adam Again, a member of The Swirling Eddies and as a founding member of the roots music supergroup Lost Dogs.-Acting:Andrusco was a child...

. On this release the band has a rockabilly sound, somewhere between the Stray Cats

Stray Cats

Stray Cats are an American Rockabilly band formed in 1980 by guitarist/vocalist Brian Setzer , upright bassist Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom in the Long Island town of Massapequa, New York. The group had numerous hit singles in the UK, Australia and the U.S...

 and The Reverend Horton Heat

The Reverend Horton Heat

The Reverend Horton Heat is the stage name of American musician Jim Heath as well as the name of his Dallas, Texas-based psychobilly trio. Heath is a singer, songwriter and guitarist....

, or "like a rockabilly version of Mike Knott..." Lyrically the album addressed hard issues such as racism ("Skin"), the underground church in China

Chinese house church

Chinese house churches are a religious movement of unregistered assemblies of Christians in the People's Republic of China, which operate independently of the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council for Protestant groups and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic...

 ("People Underground"), materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

 and temptation ("Fat Cat"), New Age

New Age

The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...

 spiritualism ("Rock 'n' Roll & My Baby"), and internal spiritual battles with our sinful nature

Original sin

Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...

.

In "Spiritual Heroin" Russinger deals with his own former speed

Amphetamine

Amphetamine or amfetamine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class which produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.Brand names of medications that contain, or metabolize into, amphetamine include Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat,...

 addiction, describing how Christ

Christ

Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

 can fill the need created by addictions, which one reviewer described as a "slightly disturbing metaphor." The album also deals with the victims of the holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 ("Death Train"), and finally closes with "Let's Go", a "no holds barred celebration of salvation."

One reviewer found the album to be on various tracks "cliché

Cliché

A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...

-ridden but vaguely worshipful", "weakly inspiring", and "shallow & dumb." The reviewer went on to state that the attempt "to bring 1950s wholesomeness into today's moral

Moral

A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...

 morass" fell flat.

Track listing

1. "Skin"
2. "Within"
3. "Childhood Love Song"
4. "Death Train"
5. "Fat Cat"
6. "Rock 'N' Roll and My Baby"
7. "Spiritual Heroin"
8. "Rocket Ship"
9. "Studio, No. 5"
10. "People Underground"
11. "Tongue Is Numb"
12. "Let's Go"

External links

• Sinking the Eight Ball song topics