LOCAL NATIVES

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Born Ruffians || Listen || Watch

Born Ruffians is on the up and up. The young Toronto band has mostly charmed critics with its two EPs to date, but guess what? Get past Luke Lalonde’s reedy voice and the yelping singalong tendencies in backing vocals and it’s clear the group is onto something: their debut album Red, Yellow and Blue is a consistent, and consistently unexpected, pleasure.

If you took Vampire Weekend’s melodic sensibility (the clean, simple melody and bass lines), threw in a serving of Animal Collective’s late-period experimental pop joy, and laid something like Alec Ounsworth’s pointed voice over the top, you might end up approaching something like Born Ruffians’ sound. What’s most apparent on their debut is the middle bit. It’s 40 minutes of joy, with few breaks. When Lalonde sings, on the opening “Red, Yellow and Blue”, that on the flag for his own country he’d include “Blue, because I’d still have sad days”, you never quite believe it. – Popmatters

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