Ruby Red & the Moonshine Brothers released their fourth album in September 2023. "Getting Louder" was a beautiful record that can safely be placed on the shelf along with other great "nordicana" albums that have been released in recent years. Over the past twelve years, the band has helped shape the wave we see today of Norwegian bands that play pop music inspired by American and Norwegian folk music.

The first single from the album, "Full and Broken" , is a "happy-sad" song about having to give up on your great love, but still finding some kind of hope that if there is one great love out there, maybe you get another chance at life? The second single, "Ain't My First Rodeo" , is about being a seasoned underdog and what it's like to fight for something you believe in, but never quite make it happen. The third single, which was released in conjunction with the album's release, is called "You and Me in a Boat" . It's a song about everything you wish you had done differently to save a relationship.

Where the band has previously focused on a holistic sound and theme throughout an album, this album is more based on the songs' own premise. The songwriters are the front figures of the married couple Marte and Nicolai Herwell, as well as guitarist Mats W. Wennerberg. Johanne Flottorp, who is also known from The Northern Belle, leaves her mark on the soundscape with both Hardanger fiddle and flat fiddle. Mats Jakob Jebe Nesmann and Tobias Flottorp on drums and bass have really found the groove on the album, even though they recorded their parts from different locations in the country.

Each song has been given the sound it was meant to have, and we move from rock and sloppy fight songs, to dreamy, ambient songs, to wonderful pop songs. It is a more mature band we meet on this fourth album, and the lyrics revolve around the theme of love in various forms. The result is a very nice album with strong songs, and with contributions from the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra itself.

The album was recorded over a long pandemic period by the band's own Nicolai Herwell. He traveled around to the rest of the band members' homes and recorded in everything from Kristiansand Cathedral, to a garage loft in central Agder, to an outbuilding in Telemark.

Since their inception as a band in 2011, Ruby Red & the Moonshine Brothers have had a fascination with the American plains and stories from the prairie. Throughout their first two albums, the band was inspired by symphonic film music, folk, Americana and spaghetti westerns. On their third album, "Over the Wall" , they took the concept a step further south, inspired by Latin and mariachi music. Thematically, the songs revolve around societal norms and future generations, but there was also room for the classic, heartbreaking songs about love, and not least stories about the hard-nosed cowboy. This fourth album offers a more varied set of strong songs in sound, but the songs still sound unmistakably Ruby.