Born Ruffians Interview May '08 (and live at Amersham Arms)

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?”

Steve: “Warp Records.”


First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.


Listen to two of the highlights from Red, Yellow and Blue here: