New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Luke Lalonde, Mitch DeRosier, and Steve Hamelin-will release PULP April 16 on Yep Roc Records. The digital-only album is the band's final release in a trilogy that began with the release of JUICE and SQUEEZE in 2020.
With an abundance of good material, following the recording of the Richard Swift-produced Uncle, Duke & The Chief, the band still had a batch of songs that they wanted to record. "We didn't set out to write a trilogy," offers lead singer/songwriter Luke Lalonde, "we just wrote a lot of songs that we liked and it seemed a shame to bury any of them. So, early on in our recording process we looked at this great big list of all the songs and said 'let's break this up into three records: JUICE, SQUEEZE and PULP'. These are a group of songs who have, "been patiently waiting their turn."
"Husha" has been kicking around YouTube and various hard drives, a bootleg of sorts, for nearly ten years," Lalonde says. "And, "
Heat Wave" is a head bobbing, slow-burn banger that just needed a little more gestation time. "Happy Parasites" was at the top of the list when we entered the studio to record Uncle, Duke & the Chief in 2017, but it never made it into the sessions." The album was produced by Graham Walsh (Holy f) and Born Ruffians and recorded at Baldwin Street Sound in Toronto.
"Just this past week a work of art by Banksy was digitized and put up for sale as an NFT, and the original work was burned. Large chunks of the world are going through a (less dramatic or performative) transference from physical to digital," offers Lalonde. "We wanted to trigger a desire to reach into your screen and interact with the artwork for JUICE, SQUEEZE and PULP. To bridge the gap between the two worlds and beckon you to touch, squeeze, and consume the album. I went on a long hunt for art that felt relevant to the current digital age but also provoked other sensory desires, specifically the desire to touch and squeeze - similar to toy advertisements from my '90s childhood - bright, shiny, and gooey. Eva Cremers ticked all the boxes. Her work is playful and fun and makes you want to touch it and interact with it."
Formed in rural Ontario, Born Ruffians arrived on the Toronto scene in 2004 and released a self-titled EP in 2006 on XL/Warp Records, who went onto release the band's debut full-length album, Red, Yellow & Blue (2008) and Say It (2010). Subsequent albums Birthmarks (2013), RUFF (2015), Uncle, Duke & The Chief (2018), JUICE (2020), and SQUEEZE (2020) were released on Yep Roc Records.
