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Born Ruffians with Prussia and Kara Keith
HiFi Club
Saturday, March 29 - Saturday, March 29

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HiFi Club

“Wow, this is a beautiful drive! Look at that!”

Don’t take it personally if Luke Lalonde, lead singer of indie-rockers Born Ruffians, seems a little distracted. “Sorry, we’re just doing the drive from L.A. to San Francisco right now,” he explains sheepishly.

It seems odd that Lalonde would be so taken with scenery. In his band’s short history, they’ve toured North America and Europe extensively, most of it done simply on the strength of their self-titled debut EP. With another tour currently in full swing, the band now has something more tangible to support — their first full-length album, Red Yellow & Blue. The album was released March 4, but the band finished recording it in May of last year. When asked what the delay was about, Lalonde is surprisingly accepting of the constant postponement that dogged the LP since its original planned release in October.

This isn’t the first time the band has been made to wait to release their music. Their EP was recorded and ready to go nine months before it hit shelves in 2007, a situation that Lalonde found much more trying the first time around.

“That was more frustrating, because we didn’t even know what we were going to do with it. But I’m sort of used to the wait, and it’s not like we’ve written a whole bunch of new songs over the last year, so these are still the songs we’re playing live,” he says of the new album.

The band’s laid-back attitude translates to their relationship with the press, where they often show off a self-deprecating sense of humour. Their MySpace page states that their album is being released “amidst a slew of press and buzz, unfortunately about other bands.”

“Well, I hope we’re not too self-deprecating,” Lalonde laughs when asked about his band’s image in the press. “That can be pretty annoying [when bands are overly modest]. I’ve seen a lot of interviews with Moby, and he drove me mental. He’d do it personally, though, he’d talk a lot about his personal life, and I was just like, ‘dude, not the time to do that.’ We’re just collectively self-conscious, or maybe we have some kind of inferiority complex as a band. Sometimes we question ourselves a little too much, but that’s just the way we are, and with our songs that’s what drives us to be better. We’re always making sure we’re really harsh self-critics.”

With Red Yellow & Blue being met with critical praise, and the band’s reputation as a live act earning them a coveted spot at the recently completed South by Southwest festival, it seems that Born Ruffians may be the only ones giving themselves any negative press.