The simple ways of the almost completely lost world of romantic classic rock ballads isn’t particularly being missed today, but maybe it should. If the first songs that sounded like Kerala four-piece Ruah’s debut ‘For All’ had just come out, they would either sound nothing like the happy-go-lucky and uplifiting rock tunes the band pulls from or they would be buried under an undending sea of songs that don’t consider themselves to be real if not laden with deep meaning and emotionally heavy statements. ‘For All’ serves to remind us of a time that sounds rather long ago now when a song could just be a positive, simple message and feature similarly fun and entertaining sounds.

The song is just a straight-ahead rock tune with some strings and piano and so on for a little added flavour. And yes, lyrically it is some sort to appeal to keep your head up and not let everything pull you into a dark place. But that’s about it. The chorus of the track is easily its catchiest section and is nothing beyond a couple of nice arena rock guitars and a simple rhythm section. The song’s final third goes more into turn-of-the-millennium pop-rock with its sticky-sweet vocal melody and orchestral arrangements, but the thread of what Ruah is doing is still pretty much very simple. ‘For All’ is an encouraging song with some easygoing writing and that’s about it. The question that it does bring up is whether music has to always be more than that. Not necessarily, and that’s what this song gets spot on.