Ruiners, Typecast

Once upon a time, there was an awesome, promising young indie-rock band called Ruiners; they released a handful of songs, one of which, “One,” lived in my head for about six months straight. And then, they were gone. Singer/guitarist Shan Pasha moved to London to go to school (while there, he played bass for a London band, H. Grimace, who are also pretty damn good), and the other guys moved on to do other things, and I shook my head and said, “well, crap, there’s another one gone before it even really gets to its feet.”

But then, they suddenly weren’t gone. Pasha was back in Houston, Ruiners was alive once again, and all was right with the world.

Except that things had changed while Pasha was overseas; with both last year’s (also-excellent) Plebeian and now with brand-new album Typecast, the band’s previously hazy, surfy, more straight-up indie-rock sound is long, long gone, replaced by something a lot darker, a lot sharper. This new incarnation of the band has moved away from those songs I first heard and loved back in 2013 and into a decidedly post-punk/math-rock realm.

And y’know what? It’s still awesome. To be sure, this is a different Ruiners than the one I used to know, but this new band is ridiculously good, just aiming in a different direction. I’ve listened back to some of those early tracks lately, after first hearing Typecast, and with the benefit of hindsight I can almost hear a hint of what the band would eventually become, some glimmers of a Rough Trade-ish sound that’s now come to the forefront. It seems pretty appropriate, I should note, that Pasha came back from his time in the U.K. steeped in what sounds to me, at least, like some seriously British post-punk.

Take “Vice,” for one, which is noisy and chaotic and sprawling (despite being less than three minutes in length), with half-chanted, half-yelled vocals over keening, shrill guitars. If you threw it at me, previously unheard, and asked me where it came from, my first response would probably be to ask if Mission of Burma had released a new album I hadn’t listened to yet, or if it was maybe a Gang of Four B-side or something; if I had to guess a more contemporary band, Shame comes to mind a bit, although not in the vocals. (I mean all three comparisons as very, very good things, in case you were wondering.)

Not that that’s the only touchstone here, of course. Opener “No” is sharp but warm, math-y and very clearly Fugazi-influenced, with its yell-along vocals, buzzing guitars, and pounding beat, not to mention the strident declaration, “Everything is cool / when you don’t care,” and that same influence shines through on both the more thoughtful, rumbling “Raptor” and on “Swipe,” a screaming, confused, militant-sounding indictment of Tinder, all noisy drones, rumbling rhythms, and cymbal crashes.

Final track “Glowing” brings Polvo to mind, especially the discordant-but-tight guitars and the heart-ripped-out howling, and then there’s “Nafrat,” a haunting, elegaic instrumental with somber guitars and drums and samples of confrontations with police, news stories about Charlottesville and North Korea, and interviews with activists and innocent bystanders. Music-wise, I’m reminded of The Promise Ring’s quieter moments just a little bit, and even more of Scottish rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks.

“Outside” is pretty different, as well, churning and heavy but not overwhelming, with complex, melodic guitar lines buried under just enough distortion to make the whole thing freaking epic, and then the back-and-forth yelling…damn, I love this song. The thing it makes me think of, surprisingly, is sadly-departed Houston band The Jonx — both bands draw/drew from stuff like the aforementioned Mission of Burma, the Minutemen, Slint, and Jawbox, and that’s always a good, good thing to my ears.

“Liquid” hits some similar notes, albeit with a bit more of a drifting haze at the beginning; after a minute or two, it shifts into this great start-stop groove that gets more and more turbulent as it rolls along, and by the end, I’m totally into it and want it to continue.

Probably the best track on here, though (I’ll admit it’s a close tie with “Outside”), is “Khandaan,” which I took at first for a pretty much straight-up love song…which is what it is, really, just not a romantic one. It’s about familial love, about loving your brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, even when they say things you disagree with or you argue and fight; the song rides a great line between harshness and sweetness, with the raw-edged guitars seemingly trading punches with Pasha’s sincere lyricism. The two meet in the middle just past the halfway point, melding a sing-song-y melody to the repeated line, “I’ll be there for you / I’ll be there for you / if you want me to,” which pretty much encapsulates how I feel about my own family, right there.

As a whole, Typecast channels a current of modern-day tension, built for a world where people live online more than off, where the country is apparently run by tweets, where the news has been both weaponized and demonized, where people live in fear that they’ll be targets because of their background or the color of their skin.

There’s a lot of fear here — fear of disconnection, of rejection, of other people, of oppression, of heartbreak — and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the album makes me think more of the Cold War era, itself another time of fear and anxiety, than of any more contemporary time period. Like it or not, we live in a time that’s scary for a whole lot of people, and it’s natural — good, even — that art can express that feeling. Ruiners has done just that, and it’s magnificent to witness.

(Feature photo by Daniel Jackson.)