Born Ruffians

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.