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For a band only two years old, whose first album, The Rhumb Line, was just released on August 19, Ra Ra Riot (MySpace) have already enjoyed a major rock band's successes and suffered comparable tragedies. First formed in 2006 by a bunch of students at Syracuse University, within a year of their formation they were opening for post-punk legends like Art Brut and Bow Wow Wow, touring the UK twice, and playing the fabulous South By Southwest Music Conference in both 2007 and 2008. Sadly, on June 1 of 2007, their original drummer, John Ryan Pike, died mysteriously after a show--but, fortunately, the band decided to continue on, which I believe is the best tribute a band can ever pay to a fallen member, especially a founding member. Now consisting of vocalist Wes Miles, bassist Mathieu Santos, guitarist Milo Bonacci, cellist Alexandra Lawn, and violinist Rebecca Zeller, Ra Ra Riot have finally released an LP that fully captures all the promise that the band has shown over the past two years and, indeed, have given the indie-rock world a unique boost of energy.
Considering the band's composition--a cellist and violinist in addition to the usual bass/guitar/drum combo--Ra Ra Riot have a sound that straddles both the post-punk genre and the "Americana art-rock" of, say, Arcade Fire. But whereas Arcade Fire, especially on their recent album Neon Bible, have a murky lo-fi sound and a certain atmosphere of portentous pomposity* (which is not a bad thing, mind you: if anyone can write music that sounds like it should be the score to a Cormac McCarthy novel, it's Arcade Fire), Ra Ra Riot--in perfect accordance with their bouncy name--produce music that has that same artful but folksy blend of instruments but eschews gloom n' doom (even in songs with titles like "Dying Is Fine") for a much brighter approach.
"Ghost Under Rocks" and the aforementioned "Dying Is Fine" both have very dancey beats straight out of the post-punk drummer's standard repertoire, but the string-rich arrangements and Wes Miles' clear and energetic lyrics give the songs' their individuality. Ra Ra Riot are not another Decemberists clone, but sound like an amalgamation of later Talking Heads (circa, say, True Stories) and a more controlled, less freaked-out Modest Mouse with just a little of Final Fantasy's neoclassical touch, a little alt-country, and a little Mellencamp-like Americana thrown in. Their songs are tight, gorgeous little rock symphonies with all the lushness of a Michael Kamen/(insert extremely popular rock band wanting to expand their sound here) collaboration but none of the overblown orchestration.
"Winter '05," in fact, is almost entirely driven by cello and violin, giving it a touch of Rasputina, minus Melora Creager's insane twitterings. It's a lovely little number whose melancholy but warm vocals are complemented perfectly by its music. "Dying Is Fine" manages to capture the same disco beat of Modest Mouse's "Dashboard" while still keeping those strings that create so much of the band's uniqueness prominent. In a world in which alternative music featuring live strings prominently is almost always fairly gentle and relaxed, it's nice to see Ra Ra Riot showing that bowed strings do not need to be playing bluegrass or country to flame with life and electricity. At the same time, though, Ra Ra Ruit can write a perfectly straightforward pop-rock number like "Can You Tell," a song that Bryan (or Ryan) Adams and Nick Lowe are probably wishing they'd come up with.
So what have we got here? A band who has split the difference between American roots-music and post-punk, combining each genre's distinctive musical elements together into a hybrid that really, honestly does deserve all the hype that's been bandied about in the past two years. Usually, when indie music journals get all up in arms about some bright young band who might be The Future of Music incarnate, they tend to wallow in unjustified hyperbole and exaggeration. But Spin magazine was 100% right when they declared Ra Ra Riot "one of the best young bands we've heard in a really long time." It's the truth, people. Ra Ra Riot have done what many bands have tried to accomplish over the years, both only a scant few have ever succeeded at: making artistic music fun.
Go see 'em now, dammit! They're on tour with The Morning Benders, Walter Meego, and Pepi Ginsberg.
*I've often said that the cover of Kansas' The Best of Kansas depicts the "sound" of Neon Bible perfectly. You've got your stern, patriarchal, Ahab-like figure pronouncing vocal judgment on a cartoon ship falling off the edge of a cartoon world, all cast in a turn-of-the-century atmosphere with an ominous, almost Faulknerian weight.
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