Review Summary: Too mild to hit, too generic to fuzz.
Born Ruffians are quite a difficult band to decipher, even though at first glance it seems like the easiest thing to do. I would love to simply throw them into the same pile as all the other washed out indie (once indie rock) bands, or do the exact opposite and say that much to anyone’s surprise they’ve managed to hold up fairly well, considering the sheer amount of their contemporaries that tend to flunk down after a successful record or two. But Born Ruffians are an odd middle ground, which never really saw any particular success, nor did it really fall from grace. Sure, their later releases were marginally weaker than their debut or sophomore efforts, but it’s not like it was either a grand upset or a minor unnoticed strive. And to say that their most recent work has been a complete miss would be relatively incorrect. They always had their merit and they always had some silly nitpick that’d drag them down. All-in-all, it was fairly obvious that Born Ruffians had and will have a bumpy road ahead, not a direct downhill ride, nor a steady walk, but a myriad of ups and downs.
Uncle, Duke & the chief is an up. A definite up. Not a radical one, but an up nonetheless. That is evident from the very first song, “Forget Me”, which surprised me with its incredibly catchy and sweet melody, even though I expected it to be at least half decent. Two things about this album become apparent from that opening acoustic ballad. First, the song-writing is going to be great at the very least; and second, the production is at fault of a Born Ruffians album’s downfall this time. When “Forget Me” started, I thought that it is one of those purposefully distorted kick-offs, where the audio sounds distant and muddled, because once the actual sound and colour of it kick in, it makes it all sound more striking. But it never changes.
The only cure against the odd, off-colour production is the banal technique of getting used to it. There really no excuse for why the sound is the way it is, except that Born Ruffians decided to make it their principle to make at least one aspect of their music off and unlikeable every time. It pretty much causes the immediate dislike (among other things) towards songs like “Fade to Black” or “Tricky”, both of which sounds like glorified demo versions of themselves.
And outside of that and the sometimes lacking performance finesse, there is hardly anything to talk about. If anything is unexpected about this album, it’s that it is so middle-of-the-road, but also harmless. It is admittedly a weak effort, but its fun nature and simple catchy tunes eventually sway you into liking it.
Uncle, Duke & the chief is not an overbooming bloated obscurity some of the band’s latest albums were, nor is it a peculiar little cuteness-fest like their first outputs. It is just a mild step up, comfortably seated in its summery easiness.
