The Dial-Up Decade #4: Soul Coughing, Ruby Vroom

BY DREW DRAIN

Released in 1994, Soul Coughing’s debut album, Ruby Vroom, is a unique and genre-defying collection that fuses jazz, hip-hop, beat poetry, and experimental rock into a dense, intricate soundscape. The album occupies a fascinating niche in the alternative music landscape of the mid-1990s, refusing to align itself neatly with the grunge or indie rock scenes that dominated the era. Instead, Ruby Vroom is an experiment that pulls from disparate musical and literary traditions to create something truly original. The record is challenging, cerebral, and deeply rewarding, offering listeners layers of texture and meaning to unpack over time. However, the album’s brilliance is underscored by the complicated dynamics of the band itself, particularly the fraught relationship between frontman Mike Doughty and his bandmates, which casts a shadow over the album’s legacy.

Soul Coughing formed in New York City in 1992 when Mike Doughty, a poet and aspiring musician, was working as a doorman at the Knitting Factory. Doughty’s dry, half-spoken vocals and oblique lyrics are layered over Mark De Gli Antoni’s sampling wizardry, Sebastian Steinberg’s upright bass grooves, and Yuval Gabay’s inventive drum patterns. The result is a record that feels meticulously crafted yet spontaneous, as though the songs are unfolding in real-time.

Each member brought a unique influence to the group: Doughty’s affinity for hip-hop and spoken-word, Steinberg’s deep jazz background, Gabay’s polyrhythmic drumming rooted in funk and breakbeats, and de Gli Antoni’s avant-garde sampling and keyboard textures. Together, they created a genre-blending sound that defied easy categorization.

Ruby Vroom, named after Ruby, the young daughter of record producer Mitchell Froom, was produced by Tchad Blake and is first and foremost an album about texture. It wasn’t grunge, it wasn’t straightforward rock, and it wasn’t hip-hop—though it contained elements of all three. Ruby Vroom was a genre-collage-up that managed to be both accessible and challenging.

The opening track, “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago,” sets the tone for the album with its fragmented lyrics and syncopated rhythm. Doughty’s voice weaves through the hypnotic bassline and jagged samples, creating a sense of urban dislocation. The song encapsulates the album’s central aesthetic: a collection of sounds and ideas that refuses to settle into conventional structures.

Throughout the album, Steinberg’s bass provides the foundation, offering grooves that are simultaneously melodic and percussive. Tracks like “Sugar Free Jazz” and “Bus to Beelzebub” showcase his virtuosic playing, grounding the band’s eclectic experiments with a rhythmic pulse. Gabay’s drumming is equally crucial, blending jazz and hip-hop influences into a style that feels fluid and dynamic. On “Screenwriter’s Blues,” for example, his minimalist beat provides a stark counterpoint to Doughty’s spoken-word performance, creating a sense of tension and unease.

De Gli Antoni’s sampling is perhaps the album’s most distinctive element. His use of found sounds, film snippets, and jazz loops transforms the songs into a sonic patchwork. On tracks like “Casiotone Nation,” his samples act as both melody and texture, blurring the lines between organic and electronic sounds. This experimental approach places Ruby Vroom in conversation with the sample-heavy work of artists like DJ Shadow and Beck, though Soul Coughing’s music is less overtly rooted in hip-hop traditions.

The album’s lyrics often resist straightforward interpretation, encouraging listeners to focus on the rhythm and sound of the words rather than their literal meaning. This approach aligns Ruby Vroom with the Beat poets and experimental writers who influenced Doughty, such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. The lyrics on Ruby Vroom are enigmatic and fragmentary, often feeling more like snippets of poetry than traditional song lyrics. Doughty’s writing draws heavily on his experiences as a poet and his immersion in New York City’s downtown art scene. Many of the songs evoke a sense of urban chaos, populated by vivid, surreal imagery.

While Ruby Vroom represents the creative peak of Soul Coughing as a collaborative unit, it also reveals the underlying tensions that would eventually lead to the band’s dissolution. Mike Doughty has been vocal about his strained relationship with the other members of the band, describing their creative process as contentious and emotionally draining. He has often mentioned that he did not have the creative control he wanted, as his bandmates frequently challenged his ideas. Doughty felt stifled, unable to fully realize his vision for the music. As a result, he has a complicated relationship with Ruby Vroom, acknowledging its artistic impact while resenting the interpersonal turmoil that surrounded its creation.

One of the most striking aspects of Doughty’s relationship with the album is his complicated feelings about its production. Ruby Vroom is a meticulously constructed record, with layers of sound that reward close listening. Yet Doughty has expressed frustration with Tchad Blake’s approach, suggesting that the producer prioritized experimentation over the clarity of his lyrics and melodies. This tension between Doughty’s desire for simplicity and the album’s maximalist aesthetic reflects the broader creative friction within the band.

Doughty has distanced himself from the band’s music, referring to the experience as painful and chaotic. Doughty’s memoir, The Book of Drugs, offers a candid look at this dynamic. He portrays himself as the band’s creative center, often at odds with De Gli Antoni, Steinberg, and Gabay, whom he characterizes as undermining his vision. According to Doughty, the band’s democratic approach to songwriting diluted his ideas, creating a sound that was more collaborative than he wanted. While this tension undoubtedly contributed to the album’s experimental and multi-faceted nature, it also took a personal toll on Doughty, who has described Ruby Vroom as a “painful” experience despite its critical acclaim.

In the years following Soul Coughing’s breakup, Doughty reinterpreted some of the band’s songs on his 2013 solo album Circles, Super Bon Bon.... The album served as a way for Doughty to reclaim these songs on his terms, stripping them of the arrangements and influences imposed by the other members of Soul Coughing. While it received mixed reactions, it illustrated Doughty’s complicated connection to his own legacy and his need to reconcile his relationship with the music he created during that turbulent period.

Despite—or perhaps because of—these tensions, Ruby Vroom remains a landmark album. Its eclecticism and inventiveness set it apart from its contemporaries, and its influence can be heard in the work of later artists who similarly blur genre boundaries. The album’s fusion of live instrumentation and sampling foreshadows the rise of electronic-infused rock in the 2000s, while its experimental approach to songwriting anticipates the collage-like aesthetics of bands like The Avalanches and TV on the Radio.

At the same time, Ruby Vroom occupies a peculiar place in the cultural memory of the 1990s. While it was critically acclaimed upon its release, it never achieved the commercial success of more conventional alternative rock albums of the era. This relative obscurity has contributed to its cult status, with fans and critics rediscovering the album as a hidden gem of the decade.

Ruby Vroom is an album that defies easy categorization, blending elements of jazz, hip-hop, and rock into a sound that feels both timeless and distinctly of its era. Its textured production, abstract lyrics, and dynamic performances make it a challenging but deeply rewarding listen. However, the album’s brilliance is inseparable from the tensions that shaped it, particularly Mike Doughty’s ambivalent relationship with the band and the recording process.

In many ways, Ruby Vroom is a product of its contradictions: a collaborative effort driven by conflict, a sonic experiment grounded in groove, and a cerebral work that still manages to feel visceral and immediate. It stands as a testament to the creative possibilities of friction, capturing the messy, unpredictable energy of a band at the height of their powers—and on the brink of falling apart.

[message]

DREW DRAIN

Andrew (Drew) Drain is originally from Point Pleasant, WV, and he now resides in Chapel Hill, NC with his daughter. Drew works as a financial risk management professional to pay the bills, but his real passion is photography. He started taking photos of his daughter playing soccer as a way to resist the urge to coach her from the sidelines. Time behind the camera developed into a love for photography that he has paired with his love for sports and live music. Follow Drew’s Instagram, @Drew.Drain.Photo or his MaxPreps galleries, to check out more of his work or contact him if you need photos of your favorite athlete or performer.

Read Drew's posts here.