The Ruffians are back with a bagful of charm-riddled cuts for your ear-holes.... Recording the album in just two weeks, the band team up again with producer Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Owen Pallett) holing themselves up in Mississauga's Metalworks studio and experimenting with Minimoogs and saxophones before eventually scaling much of it back in the mixing process.
The result is an album further amplifying the band's unique voice and sound, a progression that sees the colour, energy and youthfulness presented in Red, Yellow & Blue channeled into songs stamped with their inimitable, hugely infectious style.
The band's penchant for up upbeat guitar pop gained them comparisons to the likes of Vampire Weekend and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but for 'Say it' the band adopt a less immediate sound, giving the songs more room to amble... and they do, brilliantly. More akin now to New York's Dirty Projectors.
1. Oh Man
2. Retard Canard
3. Sole Brother
4. What To Say
5. The Ballad Of Moose Bruce
6. Higher & Higher
7. Come Back
8. Nova-Leigh
9. Blood, The Sun & Water
10. At Home Now
'Say It' recalls the airy refreshment of Vampire Weekend's 'Contra' and the garage-pop fun of Jonathan Richman's 'Rock'N'Roll With The Modern Lovers'. Their taut sun-dazed guitar lines wiggle adorably accompanied by just deft polyrhythmic drumming and understated sax (the gently soulful 'Come Back') on folksy, happy-go-lucky psych-pop songs that erase all worry. After all, as Luke LaLondone sings in his just-pubescent voice on 'The Ballad Of Moose Bruce', “What a silly world it is, to be so miserable over something inane as this. - NME
