SPILL FEATURE: BEAUTY’S PRIDE IS LOVE – A CONVERSATION WITH LUKE LALONDE OF BORN RUFFIANS

BEAUTY’S PRIDE IS LOVE

A CONVERSATION WITH LUKE LALONDE OF BORN RUFFIANS

Since breaking out with their debut album, Red, Yellow & Blue, Born Ruffians has been one of Canada’s best indie rock bands. Born Ruffians create entertainingly quirky tunes with euphorically anthemic choruses, fascinating instrumentation, a fun, upbeat energy, an ever-expanding sonic palette, and mesmerizingly commanding vocals. The band, which is composed of frontman Luke Lalonde, bassist Mitch DeRosier, drummer Steve Hamelin, and keyboardist Maddy Wilde, recently put out their ninth studio album, Beauty’s Pride.

“I started writing these songs before I knew my wife and I were gonna have a kid, and I even had the title Beauty’s Pride before then, but the title evolved and folded into a lot of things that were happening in my life,” reflects Lalonde. “The words themselves held such a power that’s why the title stuck. It was on a bicycle that I rode around in 2019 in India – Those words have an aura and an emotion that I just found really interesting and really powerful. It just became the guiding light of the record… In the end, it became for me on the most personal level about the birth of our baby, and that has become my beauty’s pride.”

Beauty’s Pride sees Born Ruffians adopting a new sound. This is largely due to Wilde, who joined the band in 2020, “It gave us permission to lean on synths more,” explains Lalonde. “She was coming up with a lot of these great parts that were really informing and influencing the songs, so the ideas that she brought to the table are definitely very present on this record.”

Lalonde feels there are two modes of Born Ruffians. “There are the more live, off-the-floor ones where you’re really trying to capture the sound that you make live. Then there’s the studio record where you’re really trying to dig in and use the studio, not worrying about how you’re gonna be playing these songs live, putting as many parts on it that work, and you’re just trying to craft a record. This was like ‘Let’s go fully into that world…’ To go out in this direction as far as we wanted to go away from what we thought our earliest sound was, which was like a very scrappy three-piece band. But there’s always the essence of that in there – I don’t think things have ever strayed too far in any wild direction that is unrecognizable as a Born Ruffians record.”

Beauty’s Pride has multiple unforgettable earworm choruses, most notably “Hi”, “Mean Time”, and “All My Life”. Lalonde shares how Born Ruffians create a chorus. “We gravitate as a group towards those more exuberant, upbeat, or fun choruses and songs and tend to drop things along the way that tend to be too serious. We like things that feel more celebratory, anthemic, and grand. I think this record is just more of that.”

Additionally, Beauty’s Pride contains interesting interludes. There are three of them: “All My Life”, “Incoming”, and “The Knowing Is Easy”. “My first draft of what I thought this record could be was almost a 50/50 split of instrumental and lyrics, and for it to feel somewhat cinematic and to really feel like an album that was just enjoyable listening front to back,” he shares. “I really wanted these interstitials to break up the record to give your brain and ears a break from words and vocals and to reset the vibe so when those things come back in it’s that much more impactful. I just like the journey that they take you on. They’re all very intentional and set up the song that they’re introducing.”

PURCHASE BEAUTY’S PRIDE VIA BANDCAMP

Beauty’s Pride opens with the ultra-catchy, danceable “Mean Time” and closes with the touching “Beauty’s Pride”. “We wanted to start the record with ‘Mean Time’ because it’s a definitive new sound for the band,” comments Lalonde. “I think it was the birth of my son, and that song ‘Beauty’s Pride’ was really written for him and with him in mind and just felt like a more poignant closer.”

The joyfully uplifting sci-fi tune “Supersonic Man” is a metaphor about childbirth. “It was initially really vibey and one I was just writing on my own and jamming, and I had this space alien in my mind, and it was about an alien coming to Earth, like a Superman scenario,” comments Lalonde. “It shifted about being more about childbirth and that alien experience of a human coming out of the womb and into the world, and I guess the parallel between those two things, between space travel and human birth, which is quite alien and strange. It’s a very, very amazing and incredibly normal thing because we all do it, we all did it, that’s how we’re all here, but also super, super bizarre.”

“To Be Seen” changed quite a bit from its demo. “It was a good song in its essence – I liked the lyrics and the melody, but I just wasn’t sure we got the recording right,” reflects Lalonde. “That song was really shaped in the mix, which is kind of rare. We sent it to Gus Van Go, who was not in the studio with us. He mixed a few of the songs after the fact. He really, really brought out things in the song that I didn’t even know were there.”

Lalonde came up with the charmingly energetic “Do” while on a walk. “I was walking my dogs, and it just formed in my head,” he recalls. “The goal from there was to try and get what I was hearing in my head out. I could hear the vocal sound going down just to the word ‘do’, and the build-up of ‘The knowing is easy/The knowing is easy’, that ethos of you know what you have to do. The hard part is you have to do it. I knew that whole message. I could hear the production… The way that I exercised it was to get Maddy, Steve, and Mitch in, explain the song, play it a little bit, and then just be like, ‘I just want to go into this extreme, loud, quiet, loud, quiet vibe and see what we can do.’”

“Can We Go Now” was formed mostly by Wilde. She brought the demo to the band, which they really liked and wanted on the record. “I was really encouraging Maddy to bring songs in like ‘I want to have your voice on this record, and I want this to feel like you’re not just a hired gun,” states Lalonde. “We’re at a point where we can give ourselves permission to do something like that, to incorporate a whole new voice in the band. That will be exciting for me and for us.”

Born Ruffians created a short film for the record, with the help of Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein of July Talk, and filmmaker Jared Raab, known for directing music videos for multiple Canadian bands, including Born Ruffians, and his work in BlackBerry and Nirvana The Band The Show. “When they came on board to do it, we were thrilled,” says Lalonde. “It was hard working on this the same time as the record. I had a hard time contributing a lot of ideas for what we could do visually. I would come up with some ideas that were too abstract, expensive, or not good. It really ended up being a lot in Jared’s hands. He really shaped and made this thing. When I saw it, I was just absolutely blown away. It brought out these themes and meanings in the music that I guess were there, but I almost didn’t even see. I really can’t recommend enough watching it to anyone who hasn’t watched it because it’s rare that a video is so complementary to the music. This goes hand in hand and just achieves this bittersweet nostalgia, longing, and Beauty’s Pride vibe.”

Beauty’s Pride dropped on June 6. “Overall, it’s a really hopeful, encouraging, uplifting record,” comments Lalonde. “It’s so cliché and hard not to be cheesy when talking about something like love and beauty, but I also think they’re worth talking about. I think they’re important. Of course, you know you find these things through darkness. There’s no light without darkness. And vice versa. So, it’s not just this twee sunshiny smiley record. It certainly has emotional depth. Beauty’s Pride is love, and that, to me, is the most powerful love that I’ve experienced, which is for my kid.”

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Photo Credit: Calm Elliott-Armstrong