So, having avoided most of the rain – and sadly a handful of the afternoon sets – it is with a fair amount of excitement and expectation at what my dirt cheap £105 ticket will bring me that I wander through the cluster of ethically sourced and fair trade stalls to the festival’s second stage, The Big Top, to catch the second half of Laura Marling’s nice-but-not-mind-blowing set. From here there is only one destination: to the main Garden Stage for Dirty Three. The Australian trio are in fine fettle, with frontman Warren Ellis on typically engaging form, ranting from somewhere behind his beard and supplementing his violin playing with an array of high kicks. In a folk-dominated weekend, the epic instrumentals they fit in to their 75 minute set (the long set times are a particularly welcome feature of the festival) are as powerful, fragile and absorbing as virtually anything that will be heard by Monday morning: a true weekend highlight before the first night’s even over.
There’s just time to pick up a hot and spicy cider from the Somerset Cider Bus (one of the hits of the weekend above all else) and it’s time for Conor Oberst’s headline slot with his Mystic Valley Band. The Bright Eyes man’s set is certainly entertaining, particularly to those familiar with the recent solo album, with evidence of the same feeling of freedom that comes through so strongly on that record. The rocking versions of ‘Danny Callahan’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Die (In the Hospital)’ and delicate solo renditions of ‘Lenders in the Temple’ and ‘Milk Thistle’ are musically great, but the performance is a little tarnished by the fact that Oberst himself gives off an air that he doesn’t fancy “End of the World” or any other festival appearance where he can see his breath in the chilly night air. Thankfully this has no particular bearing on what remained a thoroughly pleasing first day. Indeed, moments like this only stand out because of the amount of other performers – from Richard Hawley to Noah and the Whale, Bon Iver to Darren Hayman – that explicitly mention that out of all the festivals they’ve been to or played, End of the Road is up there with the best of them.
With Saturday comes sunshine and things are going so well that even the “No Alcohol” sign has disappeared and everyone is free to wander round with whatever cheap cans of lager they wish to. This sunny second day allows End of the Road’s crowning glory to come to the fore. The Garden Stage has to be the most idyllic setting in which I’ve ever watched music. Set in a clearing and surrounded by a line of trees on one side and hedges on the other, it is a natural amphitheatre, with antiquated buildings dotted around the edge to complete the Midsummer Night’s Dream feeling of the place, along with the almost surreal scene of peacocks (left) wandering amongst the people. On top of this, the sound on this main stage is as good as I’ve experienced at any outdoor show, something that makes such a difference given the different textures of the weekend’s performances.
The first one of the day is Absentee (left), who put their unique and deliciously lugubrious stamp on proceedings. Bowerbirds (below) then translate their bewitching songs to the Garden Stage, enrapturing the growing afternoon crowd with harmonious folk from debut album Hymns for a Dark Horse, while over in the Big Top, the slightly incongruous looking collective The Accidental do something rather similar. With talkative boy-girl vocalists Hannah Caughlin (also part of The Bicycle Thieves) and Liam Bailey flanked by elder statesmen Stephen Cracknell (The Memory Band) and Sam Genders (Tunng), they look a bit funny, but sound perfectly lovely. With the sun out, though, it is difficult to justify being inside and so its back outside to see the closest to current pop stars on show over the
weekend, Noah & the Whale (below). Predictably, Charlie Fink and cohorts’ sunny folk-pop complements the weather perfectly, though, as with everyone who’s been near a radio for half an hour this year, (for good or bad) the ‘5 Years Time’ melody remained firmly lodged in the consciousness for many hours.
Late afternoon brings a multi-national three-way clash between Fins Seabear, Reading’s Pete & the Pirates and Bon Iver from across the pond. After catching the first couple from Seabear in a very sweaty Bimble Inn tent it’s fresh air time again and there’s really nowhere else to head but to get a decent spot for Bon Iver. One of many of the foreign acts who espouse from the stage about what a special place this is to play music, Justin Vernon and his band reprise their triumphant recent UK performances, playing For Emma, Forever Ago in its entirety along with an impressive new song and a Talk Talk cover. The crowd sing-along of ‘The Wolves (Parts I and II)’ is as powerful in a big field as it was in a St. Giles Church back in June, and from start to finish it is a mesmerising display. If everyone takes one musical memory of End of the Road 2008 away with them, the majority will probably take this one.
Following an entertaining set from British Sea Power, it is back to the Americans to provide the closing entertainment of the night. Low’s genre-defining slowcore can be intense at the best of times, but in the most controversial and unsettling moment of the weekend, singer/guitarist Alan Sparhawk seems to suffer a complete breakdown during the course of their set. Silent for the first part of the performance, he announces half way through “What a shitty day. Everyone I love told me they hate me today”. A
A trip into the woods, or “Enchanted Forest” to give it its proper – and quite apt – name, brings some idyllic discoveries. With all completely lit by fairy lights, there is a “library” in one clearing, a public piano in another (ivories being tinkled by buskers throughout the evening – a drunken ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ sing-along symptomatic of the fun to be had), and an isolated tent with a light up dancefloor (left) in another (not to mention the “healing tent”). And these delightful touches are by no means the end of the bright ideas at End of the Road, with the Little White Lies film tent proving consistently popular, The Local and Bimble tents seemingly always full and even a small tent set up like your living room – complete with sofas, a record player and, remarkably, Trivial Pursuit. But back to Saturday night and after a lost while in the Enchanted Forest, a final stumble to the Big Top for Two Gallants is good fun, but the big tent sound unfortunately doesn’t really do justice to their undeniably great songs. That said, the duo still conjure up some crowd-pleasing moments, not least an absorbing ‘Despite What You’ve Been Told’ and rocking ‘Las Cruces Jail’. Spirits remain high for the remaining few hours of managing to stand up, with a variety of tents in which to dance and make further merry (walking into the Big Top to the sound of The Count Five’s ‘Psychotic Reaction’ is a lingering memory).
With Sunday comes more sun and the promise of a day of music to rival the first two excellent ones. If there’s any justice The Wave Pictures (above) will be a hell of a lot higher on the bill at next year’s End of the Road. Providing the perfect afternoon’s entertainment, the band sound even better than on record through a sparkling set that includes crowd requests alongside favourites from Instant Coffee Baby. They are without doubt a weekend highlight and whet the appetite for what’s to come. The band should also get some sort of medal for getting around as much as they do. Dave Watkins is clearly the most hard-working man of the festival, also reporting for duty with Darren Hayman and Jeffrey Lewis. Jason Molina’s set of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. songs is a serene affair, but a beautiful one nonetheless, Molina at once dapper and reserved. End of the Road Records’ own Woodpigeon are perfect to play the late afternoon set, the Canadians twee harmonies suiting the surroundings impeccably. A poignant note is provided in the Big Top, where indie godfather Darren Hayman admits that him and Jack probably won’t be playing too many more Darren and Jack Play Hefner Songs shows. A shame this would indeed be, but the all too brief set is a regressive delight, transporting many
a viewer to a simpler time when John Peel was on the radio, Hefner were your favourite band and each of Hayman’s ‘Hymns’ (‘to the Alcohol’, ‘to the Cigarettes’, ‘to the Postal Service’ etc) took on almost religious significance. The set closes – perhaps for the last time – with the set culminating in a brilliant guitar duel between Darren, Jack and who else but Dave Watkins.
Here there is a disastrous gap in this writer’s weekend’s experience. One problem with so much music is that there is always going to be potential greatness missed. In my case, I manage to spectacularly avoid some of the things I was really looking forward to during the course of the weekend, including both of The Acorn’s two sets, Pete & the Pirates, Shearwater, Cats in Paris, David Thomas Broughton and Kurt Wagner to name a few. In this case, perhaps the biggest clash of the weekend – Jeffrey Lewis vs Tindersticks – results in me inexplicably missing both of them. However, my festival is brought to a fitting close by the wonderful Calexico, who are the perfect culmination to the weekend on the Garden Stage and outdo almost all that preceded them. The Tucsonites entertain all before them with their unique Mexi-Americana, getting everyone dancing to songs from the fantastic latest album Carried to Dust, as well as many a horn-filled tune from their back catalogue. It’s nothing less than a superb end to a superb weekend of music.
End of the Road 2008 was undoubtedly an absolute success, but of course no festival is perfect. The sound in the Big Top (like almost every festival tent I’ve been in) was not the best, with the likes of Two Gallants not having justice done to their performance. There’s quite a high proportion of families at the festival – something mildly positive or negative depending on which side of parenthood you sit – while the more neutral attendees might find that there’s not a huge amount of variety on offer at the festival: if you fancy a spot of math-rock, reggae or drum’n’bass, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Despite the likes of Dirty Three’s post-rock instrumentals, Let’s Wrestle’s DIY indie-punk and Zombie Zombie’s synth-fuelled weirdness, folk, anti-folk, Americana and associated genres are over-represented to say the least (though that is, of course, the point). And one profession that doesn’t need to worry about the credit crunch quite yet is the brass players of the world – there was more trumpets and horns on show at End of the Road 2008 than an elephant on rhinoceros sex party.
These are merely trifling matters, though, and in general I don’t think I can recommend End of the Road highly enough. The setting, the atmosphere, the organisation, the thought that went in to almost every detail, not least the music – from Calexico back to Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – everything was nigh on perfect. With Early Bird tickets on sale already, I can’t travel down the road to September 2009 fast enough.
*****
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
[All pictures copyright Chris Helsen 2008]
For some it was on Hot Rail (2000) that John Convertino and Joey Burns’ Tex-Mex Americana vision reached its peak. Their, well, “Cal-exican” sound felt at once warm and familiar to fans of alt-country and Americana (and before that the likes of Love) but at the same time completely unique, with mariachi story-telling on tracks like ‘Ballad of Cable Hogue’ and ‘Service and Repair’ alongside brass-laden instrumentals fitting together as perfectly as nachos and guacamole. For many others it was 2003’s well-regarded follow up Feast of Wire, but either way, there have undoubtedly been patches of near-greatness for the Tucson duo and their many contributing friends throughout their 12 years. The decision to move in a more mainstream, brass-less, instrumental-less direction on 2006’s Garden Ruin, though, didn’t really reach the heights that might have been expected of it. So (if bands like Calexico actually worry about such things) sixth album Carried To Dust could be something of a pivotal release: returning to their desert roots (as the album’s title may imply) or carrying on down the shiny path to a potentially wider audience.
With that in mind, the opening ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ seems like a statement of intent, containing each of the elements that first set the band apart from their contemporaries, from jubilant brass, to Spanish vocals, to the Latin American subject matter. It’s a bubbly start and has all the hallmarks of a live favourite, but for some reason there’s something that, at least at first, just doesn’t sit quite right about this re-introduction to the sounds of the dusty West – it ’s almost as if the band might be trying too hard to re-capture former glories. The hushed ‘Two Silver Trees’ is definitely heading in the right direction thanks to a dream-like chorus, but it still doesn’t quite excite as much as it could.
It takes until the gorgeous waltz ‘The News About William’, that builds from rattling drums and delicate strings to the closing soaring vocals, that Carried To Dust really settles into its groove. And from here it is some groove. The brief instrumental ‘Sarabande in Pencil Form’ is a strangely settling segue into ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ and ‘Man Made Lake’, songs that certainly confirm the growing suspicion: Calexico are back on form. In a big way. The road-trip rhythms, backing “ooohs” and “aaahs” and lyrics about “my Irish whiskey glass” of the former track, conjure up lofty literary allusions of a hard-drinking Kerouac or Bukowski, while the screeching guitars and dramatic tones of the latter picks up where ‘The News About William’ left off, showcasing the more impressive end of Joey Burns’ range compared with the whispered gruffness elsewhere.
Thankfully, the standard far from drops after this auspicious couplet and there are more and more signposts to the fact that this is Calexico on top of their game. The Latin sounds of the bouncy duet ‘Inspiracion’ provide a convenient time to practice your conversational Spanish, and this along with the likes of ‘House of Valparaiso’ (featuring old friend Iron &Wine’s Sam Beam) and the instrumental ‘El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)’ recalls the finer mariachi moments of Calexico’s back catalogue. For the latter this is literally the case, it being a re-imagining of the Feast of Wire track ‘The Trigger’, but the initial concerns about the opening track being an attempt to recapture something lost are proven totally unfounded with each passing song. And in contrast to the it is perhaps the aching ballad ‘The Slowness’, steeped in pedal steel and lovely boy-girl harmonies is perhaps the most enrapturing moment, providing the soft centre to the album.
At 15 tracks Carried To Dust is a relatively long album (though not particularly by Calexican standards), but such is the consistency and vibrancy of almost every one of them that it seems to fly by, right up to the three suitably delightful compositions that wrap it up: a third and equally satisfying instrumental, ‘Falling From Sleeves’, the broody ‘Red Blooms’, and another triumphant collaboration, ‘Contention City’ with Tortoise’s Doug McCombs. Along with the other four fifths of the record, these tracks are filled with a whole range of textures – layers that get deeper and richer with every listen. To return to the original suggestion, it seems that rather than revert back entirely to their roots or continue down the road on which Garden Ruin seemed to be headed, Calexico have taken an entirely preferable route. For throughout the album the band perfectly bridge the gap between their unique Tex-Mex heritage and a more rounded sound.
If you were being overly critical you could say it is perhaps a little “lite” in a few places and lacks some of the menace of earlier works, but Calexico’s sixth long player is a real triumph, and at least as good as Feast of Wire, Hot Rail or anything they have put their name to thus far. The best thing is, the way it all clicks in to gear here makes for great excitement about Convertino and Burns’ future work – something you probably couldn’t have said if they had made a Garden Ruin Part 2. As it is, with Carried to Dust Calexico have hit the pinata squarely on the nose, and we are the lucky ones left to reap the candy they have left scattered beneath.
****
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
So 13 years since his last solo album (released when he was still just 15), Conor Oberst has decided to freshen things up a little, give Bright Eyes a bit of a breather and go back to basics with his fourth solo effort overall, Conor Oberst. Maybe he just felt he needed some Conor time. Whatever the reasons behind the return to singledom, thankfully (or not, depending on your point of view) very little seems to have altered musically in this new eponymous direction, with much of Conor Oberst – not least single ‘Souled Out!!!’ – continuing in a the same more polished vein as 2007’s Cassadaga and before that ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’.
On the evidence of ‘Souled Out!!!’ it does seem that being freed of the Bright Eyes moniker has left Oberst in a particularly relaxed frame of mind. Virtually everything about this free spirited single, from the carefree pun of the exclamatory title, to the regular background chatter and descent into laughter mid-verse, has a throwaway air to it. Fairly non-sensical lyrics about things like flying “to the moon in a soda can” fill the verses, while the euphoric chorus announces that “You won’t be getting in” because – there’s that pun again – it’s all “souled out in heaven”. Despite this un happy conclusion, Conor et al certainly sound like they are having fun and it all adds up to a breezy country rock sing-along that is by no means Oberst’s finest hour, but remains a perfectly agreeable listen.
There is actually something surprisingly Oasis-like about ‘Souled Out!!!’, with both the simple scale of the opening guitar solo and the chorus backing vocals sounding rather Noel-esque (not to mention the soul-related pun). If the Gallaghers had been more into the Stones than the Beatles and just spent the summer listening to Exile on Main Street, they might have come up with something bit like this. Taking on board this comparison, the ultra cynical might even think that, taken in isolation, this song bears all the hallmarks of a 3 and a half minute, written for radio single, and that his forays with the Mystic Valley Band may even be Oberst’s way of cashing in without damaging the Bright Eyes brand. This would be way too harsh on man who has already enjoyed the top two singles on the Billboard chart, though, and one who has been turning out albums full of alt-country gems for over 15 years. Especially when you take into account that Conor Oberst is another such record.
In reality, ‘Souled Out!!!’ is just a slightly more radio-friendly than usual taster of another very good album from Conor Oberst. Whether you think the man’s “souled out” or not, you can call it what you want: Conor Oberst, Bright Eyes, it’s all pretty much business as usual.
(For fans of US pop culture it’s worth noting that, as well as download, the single is available as a 7” featuring an etching by Grace McSorely comic creator Kaite Murphy.)
***
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
The Hold Steady became everyone’s favourite underdogs with breakthrough third album Boys and Girls in America – something that probably even surprised themselves. The Brooklynites’ blend of blue collar Springsteen-infused boisterous rock and Minneappolis-inspired lyrics about drinking and bars and girls and drinking...in bars...with girls didn’t seem to fit into the musical landscape of new rave, math rock and the rest. Nor did the band wear skinny jeans, have big hair...and they certainly weren’t young. But all this just makes the Hold Steady’s success all the more satisfying. Sounding like they were forged from the sticky, beer-stained tables of the dirtiest, smokiest underground bar this side of the Twin Cities, the five-piece proved that a collection of good rock songs can cut through any passing genre.***
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
Born Ruffians. The name does sum them up pretty well doesn’t it? For the Toronto band’s debut album, Red, Yellow and Blue, is one brimming with youthful rushes of adrenalin, precocious nursery rhyme-like ditties and, more importantly, effortlessly infectious tunes. Bloody loads of ‘em. One of Warp Records’ few forays away from their clean, clinical, electronic habitat into a more chaotic, guitar-based world, it is also an album that barely puts a foot wrong from beginning to end, joyous twisted pop gem following joyous twisted pop gem.
Sickeningly enough for those of us that have tried and failed at the whole ‘making music’ thing, it sounds like these three young men might have just stumbled upon this formula through sheer dumb luck, that they are simply having a good time making throwaway music without thinking too much about the fact that they manage to create perfect scruffy pop in the process. Mixing jerking guitar rhythms with clashing verses and choruses to concoct songs that sound like they shouldn’t work but fit together flawlessly; naïve-adolescent-meets-teen-slacker lines like “The sun is shining but we stay inside, oh but we go out at night” (‘I Need A Life’) or “I get told to never get old” (‘Little Garcon’); the feral yelps of the backing vocals; the simple pop melodies at the heart of the album: all these things hint that the band’s modus operandi may have been tripped over rather than sought out.
Desperate to get to the bottom of Born Ruffians’ success in making an album that had laid siege their ears, Rockfeedback went to meet singer/guitarist and alliterator’s dream Luke LaLonde and drummer Steve Hamelin at Warp’s offices in Kentish Town. In the course of discussing such topics as the stresses of recording and touring, incest with your sister, not knowing how to touch your girlfriend, who does Canada’s PR and the mating habits of a variety of species of animal, these affable young Canadians come across as a lot more earnest than expected, older than their years perhaps – at least as far as the way they feel about their music. What is certain is that this was no accident – they take this whole ‘making music’ thing very seriously.
The band was formed while the three were at high school, with the added connection of Mitch being Luke’s cousin. However, beginning by playing Strokes, Hives and Constantines covers there seemed to be no burning desire for fame or to just be in a band to be ‘cool’.
“I’d been playing guitar since I was 11 and I can’t remember ever greatly wanting to be in a band”, Luke says. “It wasn’t until we started playing together that I thought, ‘Hey this could be cool’, and it just started to be something that we did as a hobby. None of us were really into what a lot of other kids were doing at the time, we weren’t getting drunk every weekend and we didn’t play sports or anything so [being in a band] was just something to do I guess, and it turned into this obsession throughout high school and we took it really seriously. Steve did learn drums as the band was starting to play together, but yeah I’d been taking lessons since I was 11 and Mitch learned the bass in high school music class on my suggestion. I said to him ‘you should play bass in music class’ and he was like ‘OK’ – he just didn’t know better I guess.”
Like many musicians who have emerged in the years since and undoubtedly many more in the years to come, 2001, The Strokes and the release of Is This It was ‘year zero’ for Born Ruffians, and though certainly not a traditional garage rock band the influence of the New Yorkers can be felt on Red, Yellow & Blue. Steve emphasises how important the Strokes’ debut was for them in their formative years, coming out when the three were “just turning 15 or 16”, while Luke admits ”We probably did take some stuff from them. I mean, we don’t really try and sound like them, but just because we listened to that record so much at such a critical age it couldn’t not have an effect on our band. One thing we did take away from the Strokes was listening to their songs and then seeing them live – all their parts are ‘real’ parts that are the same every time and there’s no meandering solos. Those solos are guitar ‘parts’: it has a melody and a reason to it. Everything they did seemed to have a reason to it and there wasn’t any filler in their songs. So we definitely took that away: ‘Let’s make sure that every instrument is ‘doing’ something and cut the fat out of our songs.’”
As with The Strokes, where Julian Casablancas’ singing is often low in the mix, giving it virtually an equal billing with each of the other instruments at work, Luke’s vocals frequently do the same, and, rather than overpowering a song, a drum or guitar part regularly demands at least equal interest with the vocal melody. He is quick to point out, tongue firmly in cheek, that “I don’t think I take much vocally from Julian Casablancas, except maybe his cool swagger…”
There is no one clear influence on the band, though, who – if you really want to look for it – can be reminiscent variously of Animal Collective (‘Red, Yellow & Blue’), Vampire Weekend (‘Hummingbird’), Modest Mouse and even the likes of Devendra Banhart on quaint anti-folk ditty ‘Little Garçon’. In fact, the album is all over the place musically. Luke explains that this is probably down to the slight divergences in taste and personality of the band: “We all started to spread out and listen to more music after [2001] trying to find out what else is out there, what music had we missed out on in the 80s and the 70s and started to go back and find older stuff that was cool. And still we’re still finding new music all the time. We all share similar music tastes but we all went off in slightly different directions and maybe one person’s more into one thing at the time. That added to the sound and diversity of the record.”
There can be little denying that Born Ruffians have a pop heart, with songs like ‘Hummingbird’, ‘Badonkadonkey’ and ‘I Need A Life’ among the catchiest you’ll hear this year. However, their real success is in keeping the edges rough – the clumsily metaphorical room of choice is definitely the garage rather than the lounge. This is largely due to the band themselves and the songs that they have written, but it is also thanks to Rusty Santos (producer of Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs) who lent his knob-twiddling talents to the album. “Yeah there’s definitely pop songs on the album,” acknowledges Steve, “but he [Santos] does some interesting things with the production, with reverbs and mic placements.” Despite being a three-piece, Red, Yellow & Blue generally sounds like there is one big party going on in the studio and at times you can’t believe that Luke, Steve and Mitch can be making this racket on their own. “Some songs he recorded with just two sets of mics and built it from there, and, for example, we positioned ourselves in different spots around the room one instrument at a time, so it came out like there’s a six-piece band or something though it’s just us. So there’s things like that he added that were a step up from our EP [self-titled in the US, released in the UK last year as ‘This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life’], but he’s not a ‘slick’ producer and he wasn’t making sure everything was technically correct with a click track or anything so I guess that’s what keeps the ‘garagey’ sound.”
Talking of animals… whatever people say about the impact of global warming, deforestation and other nasty human endeavours, they are at least thriving in the music industry. And we’re not talking ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. The zoology of the musical cutting edge includes the aforementioned Collective and its own Panda Bear, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Band Of Horses, Sam Sparro, the list goes on (without even mentioning a certain band from Sheffield). And this is also something that ties Red, Yellow and Blue together: a bit of an animal fixation. A quick glance through the song titles alone reveals ‘Barnacle Goose’, ‘Hummingbird’, ‘Badonkadonkey’, ‘Red Elephant’ and ‘Foxes Mate For Life’. After being warned to “answer carefully” about this obsession by Steve, Luke [ahem] sheepishly admits:
“I guess it’s just because I have an interest in animal documentaries and stuff like that. There were a few songs that just had animal names in them and then there was a time where I think I was trying to get a reference into every song to just try and have a theme in these songs that had been written over such a long period of time. It’s kind of hard to link [the songs] together, so maybe it was a way to try and keep them cohesive as a marking of when they were written. Some of [the animal references] actually have a point, like ‘Red Elephant’ – that’s actually in the song and that metaphor is what the song is actually about – but then some of them were just given animal names for no good reason! It’s actually true that foxes mate for life, in most species anyway, there are one or two that don’t. There is a species of bird that does it too…something like the blue-breasted titty or red-breasted booby or something weird like that”, he adds with his own brand of Canada Dry humour.
If you were to do some market research on Born Ruffians and you got YouGov to ask a cross-section of the population to listen to their music and sum it up in no more than five words, I would like to think that at least 78.2% of those surveyed would say ‘fun’ in there somewhere. The songs just have a streak of youthful energy running through them, with the playful titles, erratic rhythms and ubiquitous shrieks and yells. It sounds like it must have been rather entertaining to record. Steve, however, tells another story:
“It was pretty stressful actually! We had 14 days for recording, but for some reason we decided to record the whole thing in seven and mix for seven. We did 14 tracks in total, so we were recording two tracks a day, which doesn’t sound like a lot but was pretty stressful! Things like the backing vocals, though, we had a pretty good time doing - lot’s of shouting and laughing, usually at my expense with me not hitting this one note 200 times.”
“Anytime we were all in a room together doing something it was fun”, Luke agrees, “but recording is funny because there’s a lot of waiting around watching Rusty turning knobs or doing something on a computer, and you end up just reading a lot and I just played the piano a whole lot. That’s my main memory of recording, just playing the piano in a big room for two weeks! But it was a great experience.”
However stressful the week of recording was, there can be no doubt that the music that emerged from it was in the main as joyous as it comes. But frivolity aside there is certainly something more cerebral about Born Ruffians than you might expect from band who has a song called ‘Badonkadonkey’ that for the most part consists of the repeated child-like line “I’ll put you in my pocket for when I get home”. Another song on Red, Yellow and Blue is named after cult satirical novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a man the band clearly admire: “It was written before he died so it wasn’t like a tribute song or anything”, says Luke, “but I quoted [Vonnegut’s 1963 work] Cat’s Cradle and didn’t change it all so I just wanted to credit him in some way. It’s one of my favourite books.” This combination of playfulness and seriousness is probably one of the reasons that the band is so appealing. They have the scruffy, hip pop songs to satisfy the Skins crowd (a show they have already appeared on, that Steve calls “our first experience being in a ‘dramatic performance’… and probably our last” and that the band describe variously as “interesting”, “strange” and “weird”) but it is clear that this is backed up by a real industriousness towards their music. You are hearing this, too, both live and on record – though you might not be aware of it – and when they talk about the (now year-old to them) album it is clear that they are desperate to get it into people’s ears.
Born Ruffians have two more things going for them: they are a band from Toronto and they are band that is signed to Warp. The band clearly see the Warp signing as flattering, but deserved: “It’s a huge compliment”, beams Steve, “And especially as the guitar bands they have are so amazing, like Battles and Grizzly Bear, it’s crazy. It’s intimidating though, I feel like the kid brother sometimes, like they were just ‘sign one of those nee-ner nee-ner bands’. But I think they actually like us, they seem to.”
Being from Toronto, or Canada in general has never harmed a band, especially in the UK. From the outside it seems to be such a vibrant, downright ‘cool’ place to make music where surely everyone just hangs out with members of Broken Social Scene all day? “I think it is a great place to make music”, says Luke. “Sometimes, though, it’s hard to feel like a band from Toronto. Especially recently with so much travelling around, you start to feel like you don’t have a home! And when we were there we weren’t really part of a tight-knit scene, we have friends in bands but we kind of just do our own thing. Broken Social Scene are kind of a generation older than us and we don’t really know any of them unfortunately, but there are younger bands like Tokyo Police Club that we’re friends with and other bands that I don’t know at all, like Crystal Castles who apparently are doing really well over here. I didn’t even know they were from Toronto! But there is a lot of great music coming from Toronto and Canada in general. It’s funny on some people’s Myspaces or whatever they say ‘I like Canadian indie rock’ – I don’t know why you’d ever limit yourself to that! I don’t know how to view it, maybe it’s just seen by some people as a really ‘cool’ scene to be into, like maybe Canadian music is cool right now or something.”
Steve offers some thoughts on the prevalence of successful Canadian indie bands. “We do have music programmes in high school and the government subsidises music so maybe that has something to do with it. And we have healthcare. So maybe that allows people to just lay around.”
“It’s a little less stressful to be a musician in Canada!” agrees Luke. “I always wonder if it’s a social thing too: there’s just more people bumming around just playing music...
However laid back the Canadians are, touring – as well as recording – has its unglamorous side, as Luke explains. “There’s definitely fun parts and there’s definitely hard work. We’ve been touring with really good bands [currently fellow Canadians, the also animal-monikered Caribou] so we’ve been pretty lucky in that way cos they’re really nice guys.”
“The hardest part is you’ll get home and home will feel so good and you’ll just get used to ‘I’m home’”, Steve continues, “and then you’re like ‘Oh I leave tomorrow for 5 weeks’. And you’ll just get used to being on tour and then it’s time to go home. Every time I go home my reunion with my girlfriend is kinda awkward. It’s like I forget how to interact. It’s pretty abnormal to leave someone for 6 weeks, come home for a week and then leave for another 6 weeks. But being in a band with a bunch of guys or girls or whatever, there’s certainly nothing to complain about!”
“You do find it’s weird when you get back to your girlfriend or whatever. You’re like ‘Am I allowed to touch you?’ – you feel nervous again...” agrees Luke regarding the strain prolonged travel can have on a relationship:
“I slept with my brother for 6 weeks on the last tour, so I wasn’t allowed to touch then” responds Steve. “For so many reasons.”
Still, playing live remains an integral part of the Born Ruffians experience. A show at the Amersham Arms the night after our interview highlights all the above. Luke is right – they don’t waste anything in their songs. Each one is related with just the same organised chaos as on record, while anxiousness over guitar troubles indicates a real concern for crowd pleasing rather than carefree abandon. That’s not to say it does not look like fun on stage, with Mitch in particular enjoying his role as bass player/a capella shouter. It does seem a bit more fun for the hollering rhythm section than it does for Luke, who clearly relishes the challenge of writing songs as much as the pressure of playing live. “There’s definitely different perks to different bits [of being in a band] and each one feels a bit different. Live I’ve actually been learning to have more fun recently actually. I feel like this past tour is the most fun I’ve actually had playing shows. Maybe because the writing hasn’t been going so well! It’s definitely really fun when you’re writing and you play a new song for the first time – that’s one of the best feelings you can have.”
Touring and recording stresses aside, Born Ruffians do show glimpses of the riotous fun that comes across so strongly on record and during the live show and the interview descends into a comical discussion of incest and racism. The opening track to Red, Yellow and Blue is actually a typically child-like rumination on what colours they would choose for the national flag if they started their own country, settling on the eponymous primary colours. But what of this brave new world of Born Ruffians Land – what would that be like? And more importantly, what would the immigration policy be?
Luke: “Definitely only incestual reproduction. No outsiders allowed unless we could brainwash them. It would be like a cult.”
Steve: [clearly worried by this] “Who does it start with, if it’s incestual?”
Luke: “Me.”
Steve: “So it’s just you and your sister?”
Luke: “No...”
Steve: “But you said it’s incestual relations”
Luke: “I meant, like, within the colony. I didn’t mean incestual literally, incestual within the group... and me and my sister.”
Steve: “I might have to get my own country. I won’t be racist or xenophobic. Anyone can come in! And no incest. I’ll call it Canada. Although we [Canada] are racist... everybody’s racist somewhere.”
Luke: “Haha. ‘Everybody’s racist somewhere.’”
Steve: “No... We’re not, like, ‘We’re Canada, we love everybody’, but people think we are.”
Rockfeedback: “Canada does get a good press.”
Steve: “We do get a good press. We have good PR!”
Rockfeedback: “Who is doing your PR?”
