After passing the 20th anniversary mark in 2024, Born Ruffians reemerge as a band reborn on Beauty’s Pride, an album that reflects dramatic changes in personnel, musical direction, and life philosophy. Since dropping a trio of records in just over a year at the dawn of the 2020s, the Toronto trio became a foursome with the recruitment of old pal Maddy Wilde as their first full-time synth player, while singer/guitarist Luke Lalonde became a dad. All that upheaval is manifest in the album’s breathtaking opener “Mean Time,” a new parent’s rumination on the fleeting, fragile nature of life cast in a strobe-lit ravey banger that translates Lalonde’s anxiety into communal ecstasy. While that club-thumping track represents the boldest departure from the trio’s fidgety indie-rock foundation, the addition of Wilde also infuses the more familiar-sounding songs with greater textural depth: With its hollered chorus hook and hyperactive tempo shifts, “What a Ride” has all the hallmarks of a rambunctious old-school Ruffians rocker, but its twinkling synths and rhythmic precision exhibit a newfound sci-fi sheen, while the inspirational seize-the-day anthem “Do” envisions a not-too-distant future where robots start forming grunge bands. However, Wilde isn’t just here to enhance Born Ruffians’ aesthetic, but to completely reformulate it, too: On “Can We Go Now,” she assumes lead-vocal duties and transforms the group into the blissed-out cosmic lounge-pop act of her dreams.