BORN RUFFIANS – RED, YELLOW & BLUE
“I was obsessed with primary colours for a little while,” says Born Ruffians singer/guitarist Luke Lalonde. “I don’t know why. It’s such a childish thing, and it’s so simple. The colours just look good together.”
Lalonde’s obsession inspired the title of Born Ruffians’ debut album: Red Yellow & Blue is out March 4th on Warp Records in North America and Europe. Its 11 songs were recorded in May 2006 at Toronto’s Chemical Sound by New York-based producer Rusty Santos, best known for his work with Animal Collective and Panda Bear.
For Toronto-based Ruffians, the album’s release comes after a period of sustained touring on the back of their acclaimed self-titled EP, with the likes of Hot Chip, Caribou, Akron/Family, Peter, Bjorn & John and the Hidden Cameras.
And though they’re identifiably the same band who two years ago won airplay at home and abroad with their demo recordings, followed by an international recording contract, Born Ruffians—Lalonde, 21, bassist Mitch DeRosier, 21, and drummer Steve Hamelin, 22—have made broad strides both as writers and as players. On RY&B they’ve put that progress on display; as Lalonde says, “It’s just us taking another step forward without thinking about where we’re putting our foot.”
While those few early Ruffians songs had bloggers scrambling for different ways to say “quirky” and “spazzy” and “post punk” and “dance punk,” RY&B shows just how much broader than that are the band’s talents, and how difficult their music is to pigeonhole.
If you had to play the sound-alike game, you might suggest Jonathan Richman fronting the Talking Heads, or the Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano in the kitchen with Animal Collective—and you’d be close; but you’d miss something essential about the band’s personality, about their easy on-stage charisma, and about the unique style that’s already on display on their first full-length.
Ruffians experiment with proggy time signatures, and they write songs that betray a country music influence. They can be wistful and sad, or goofy and triumphant—sometimes on the same track. Says Lalonde, “The nicest compliment we get at shows is when people say, it’s really great pop music. You guys write really great pop songs, but I can’t think of anybody else who really sounds like you right now.”
It is tricky to draw comparisons for songs like Red Yellow & Blue’s title track, with its simple melody draped over a martial drumbeat and fife-like whistling, or for the swing and stomp and choral backing vocals of “I Need a Life,” or for the shifting cadences of “Barnacle Goose.” Hamelin and DeRosier form an unusually melodic rhythm section, and while Lalonde writes the melodies and cobbles together the foundations for the band’s songs, they’re often radically transformed once the other musicians start working on them.
It might be Lalonde’s lyrics, though, that set Ruffians apart from their peers most strikingly. Like Richman, Lalonde is a thoroughbred romantic, and like Richman he expresses it in writing that’s simple and direct. He can find a perfect analogy for love in “Foxes Mate for Life,” and charm you with a winsome approach to sexuality on songs like “In a Mirror” and “Red Elephant.”
RY&B is open, urgent, bold and bright. In an indie scene that too often sounds as flat as a dull gray sky, Born Ruffians are a wash of colour
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