Born Ruffians
Hometown: Midland, Canada
Tags: indie, indie rock, canadian
Born Ruffians from Toronto, Canada here. We’re writing to tell you we’ve just finished our third album – Birthmarks.
When we wrote our first album, Red, Yellow & Blue, we all lived in a house in downtown Toronto. We jammed in the basement, which meant whenever we had an idea we could work it out right there that moment. Our second album, Say It, was different. We’d moved out of the house to separate apartments and wrote the record in a rehearsal space over a 6 month period.
This time, we had no interest in going back to the rehearsal space. Instead we went back to the roots of our debut and lived together again. The three of us plus Andy, our fourth member now with us to fill out our live show, spent a spring and a fall isolated at a haunted farmhouse in rural Ontario.
Living together and not relying on a shitty rehearsal space was important to us. We wanted to be able to write when the idea was fresh, stop when we got stuck, and pick everything back up whenever we wanted. Being on a farm where we were isolated and could turn up as loud as we could was important.
These songs – Birthmarks – came out of a dusty living room in an old house, in between chopping wood and building bonfires, playing crokinole at the kitchen table, cooking family dinners and shooting beer cans with a bow and arrow. We’d wake up, head downstairs from our rooms, and write.
While some of Birthmarks was born on the farm, many of the songs were conceived long before. Luke would write and demo constantly on his laptop, at home, on tour, in Toronto, Montreal, Midland, Australia, France, Germany, everywhere. Several songs were realized during the recording process in the studio.
After we felt we had a strong group of songs we booked ourselves into Boombox Sound and spent most of 2012 moving in, out and around there with producer Roger Leavens and engineer Marcel Ramagnano tracking some 15 songs and figuring out the sound of the album. Luke had just finished doing an album of his own at Boombox so the environment was warmed up and ready for the band to come in. Luke worked closely with Roger on the production of the record, bringing sounds and parts of demos in from
his laptop and dropping them into the studio, often building from there. The sound of the record was largely shaped by freedom of time and the new ability to manipulate a song over the course of several days or weeks until it was ready.
We don’t want to tell you about what we think we sound like. We can tell you that this record will sound different. These songs lived with us, toured with us, got drunk with us and made our ears ring. Now, we get to hit the road and start making your ears ring. It took us almost three years writing all over the world, several months of farm life in the country, and a calendar year at Boombox Sound to finally finish Birthmarks. We think it’s time to show you what Born Ruffians birthed.
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Buzz Bands LA on Born Ruffians
13 days agoFirst Monday in May: ► Canadian rockers Born Ruffians , touring behind their third album (and first for Yep Roc) "Birthmarks" [ "Needle" will get your day started right ], play a sold-out show at the Troubadour, supported by Moon King and Avid Dancer. ► Hunter Hunted head up a big bill at It's a School Night at Bardot , which also features People Vs. Larsen, Kelly Sweet and KG Bird. ► And a host of free Monday night residencies kick off — Criminal Hygiene at the Bootleg more here
TheOwlMag on Born Ruffians
about 1 month agoBorn Ruffians Birthmarks [Warp]
If you haven’t seen the Born Ruffians play a live show, you’re missing out. It’s wild, unhinged, and loud. They walk a unique line of composure and complete insanity, and it changes by the second. Their live shows previously served as incubators for how the songs would appear on record. The bi-polar nature of tracks like “Hummingbird,” and “this sentence will save/ruin your life” made it impossible to ignore their energy.
On Birthmarks we find the band in an entirely different place. Going for a more polished and mature sound, the guys brought on Roger Leavens to produce, and the results are solid. Birthmarks is going to appeal to a wide audience, most of the tracks are instantly likable, with excellent vocals by Luke LaLonde. There are a lot of influences on the record from The Fleet Foxes to The Talking Heads, and it all works. We miss the wildness of the earlier records, but the trade off for more thoughtful concepts and sound seems fair, and will most likely result in a lot of new fans. This album will be for sale on Urban Outfitters for sure, and will probably do well, as it should.
The album opens with the amazing “Needles,” which has a Fleet Foxes-esque hymnal feel and couldn’t have been sung better by Robin Pecknold himself. It’s filled with longing “I belong to no one, a song without an album…I belong with no one.” It soon breaks out of church, and goes into classic Born Ruffians post-punk tempo, and the hook actually feels influenced by world beat “A way! A way! A way to always become: Lost! Lost!” It’s a dramatic shift, and just as compelling as their wild youthful tracks of yesteryear. Lalonde’s growing up and trying to hold back even if he wants to burn. The tension makes for a good record, but we’re rooting for the burn to resurface and blend with this new sound.
more at theowlmag.comGuardian UK's New Band Of The Day on Born Ruffians
6 months agoHometown: Toronto, Canada The lineup: Luke Lalonde (singer, guitarist), Mitch DeRosier (bass) nand Steve Hamelin (drums) The background: From what must surely be the greatest electronic pop label of them all, Warp, the home of the digital and pristine, comes this straggly, scraggy, scruffy racket. We know Warp have already got freak folkers Grizzly Bear and math rockers Battles on their roster, but Born Ruffians really are at the furthest extreme from Aphex Twin's ambient Melodies from Mars. They recall every rickety, ramshackle, just-got-out-of-bed, close-to-collapse US indie band from Truman's Water to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah while simultaneously displaying the feral power of the Pixies and the studied lethargy of Pavement, a neat trick when you think about it. Although as Johnny Rotten almost once sang, languor is an energy. Like Pavement, Born Ruffians, whose name reads like a pithy critique of the Libertines/Strokes squalor-rock aesthetic, are sardonic slacker geeks, wryly undermining themselves and their status as potential bright young things at every turn. "We are the next link in the evolutionary chain of contemporary pop music," they grandly state, "mixing drums, bass and electric guitar, an almost unheard-of combination." A witty indie band with decent comic timing... more at guardian.co.uk
pitchfork on Born Ruffians
over 5 years agoBorn Ruffians are three Toronto teenagers with the precise sound we imagine when we think of indie rock in this post-Arcade Fire, post-CYHSY world.more at pitchforkmedia.com