Born To Party
Born Ruffians take you back to a simpler, more fun time.
Born Ruffians
Red, Yellow & Blue
Released on Nov 30, -0001
Remember those parties over at that guy’s house? Yeah, the guy who had that attic that had NO windows and only one ventilation fan cranked up all the way. There was a cooler full of cheap beer and they were charging two for a dollar, but you didn’t need to buy any because you’d brought a full backpack of 40’s. There was the music turned up far too loud, the gathering on the front porch, the moon that you could only see from the attic when you looked through the spinning fan blades, and about one-hundred people that you didn’t know and all of them were acting like they’d just graduated from the 5th grade, and had eaten one too many giant pixie sticks from the corner store. You were smashed up next to rolled up t-shirts and the sweat of a hundred lonely kids, but everyone had a smile on their face for no reason. It was the first time you’d felt that balance of debauchery and respect, of longing while being accepted. The Born Ruffians were there and they’re ready to take you back.
The Born Ruffians’ first full-length, Red, Yellow & Blue, doesn’t take you back to that old party in the way that you might think. Sure, there’s guitarist/vocalist Luke LaLonde’s poppy guitar plucking and possibly pubescent voice cracking in all the right places. Mitch DeRosier’s bass lines bounce along with the energy of homecoming pep rally, and the syncopation of Steve Hamelin’s drumming moves fluidly through all the time signatures you swore would be popular when you were going through your jazz phase. But The Born Ruffians aren’t all kids tricks and anti-aging tricks.
Maturity sinks in to the title track like a cool methadone drip over the soothing guitar chords that introduce the album. After a hopeful iteration of a primary-colored flag design, the lines that round out the song, “and although I am leader of this country/blue, because I’d still have sad days,” sinks to a depth that’s just deep enough, and sung with enough humility, that you can’t help but sigh aloud.
But this is a party. “Barnacle Goose” and “Hummingbird” go ahead and snap you into the overarching crux of the disc, syncopating their way through some of the most precise pop chants in recent history. “Hummingbird” features some of the most perfectly distorted bass since Flea figured out how to pluck and Luke especially kicks things into high gear with his charged and climbing guitar sound backed by a beat that jaunts back and forth so erratic and precise that even the whitest of us can dance along.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Born Ruffians is the way that the entire band chants along phrenetically, as much reacting only to Luke’s lead as the inherent rhythm of the song. This anomaly is especially prevalent on “Kurt Vonnegut” (an ode to the dichotomies in wanting to find a companion) and “I Need A Life.” The latter of which pounds through the sloth-like life of your early 20’s (“We stay in looking for a better life”) when the sun is out and the borderline religious moments of singing along with friends once the stars are out (“Oh, but we go out at night”).
If you’re looking for a record that describes how it felt when you were 19, you’d just moved away from your parents’ house and nothing mattered outside of dancing and moving and living; if you’re looking for a record that reflects, musically as much as lyrically, the pounding, emphatic and frantic rambling from one creed to the next, and moreover, the fun that all of it was, then let the Born Ruffians take you out for a night on the town. Throw the disc in, crack open a cheap 40 and get taken back to all those carefree nights at parties where you knew no one and everyone at the same time.
High Point: I don’t know if it’s all the refreshed energy at the end of the album or the musicification of a personal hero’s thoughts on love… and I don’t care. “Kurt Vonnegut” is a barrage of sound in all the right spaces.
Low Point: The beginning of “Little Garçon” – Though the mellowed out vocals wrap you in a warm blanket for this song, they also bring back the tune of those cotton commercials that were so popular for a few years. I can’t detatch it from my perpetual pine for polyester.
Quick Point: If you visit the Born Ruffian’s myspace page you can find a picture of a bloodied-up Luke in a kitchen with various live fowl.
High Point
Low Point
Posted by Mark Steffen on Mar 12, 2008 @ 12:00 am