The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: courtesy of lostinthepost.files.wordpress.com Ratatat's self-titled first album may still be their very best.

Every now and again, a band or artist will play at a Boston venue and become that week’s “it” show. You’ll hear about this “it” show in the stairwell of the Walker Building or in the smoking circles outside of the Little Building, perhaps wondering what all of the fuss is about and if there are still tickets. This Sunday and Monday, the “it” show is Ratatat at the Paradise Rock Club. If you’re interested in tickets, one Emerson student stood outside the venue last year with a sign that read “Sexual Favor for Ratatat Ticket.”

Ratatat’s newest release, LP3, which will be performed Sunday night, kicks off with a quiet, atmospheric sound unlike anything the duo produced in the past. The song, entitled “Shiller,” is a track that builds upon itself, beginning with a playful series of notes and distorted noise and ending with an immense electric wall-of-sound, becoming a powerful sum of its parts. 

“Shiller” is the first single off LP3, and one that seems more focused and restrained than anything Ratatat’s released before.  Like all of the group’s music, the track is instrumental, but it still pulses forward with all of the urgency of a narrative-driven song.

 If it isn’t as strong as their self-titled first album, it certainly is a step in the right direction, especially after Classics, their rocky and only sporadically successful sophomore effort.

For nearly four  years, Ratatat’s been fooling around with the basic structure of electronic noise-rock, producing music that slips and slides over and under its own inner workings.

Samples and bits of noise build upon each other, coming and going to suit the nature of the track like a feverishly detailed Jenga tower.

The group is the love child of Mike Stroud and Evan Mast, who met at Skidmore College and began recording together in 2001.

Ratatat immediately caught the attention of the indie rock community three years ago, receiving extremely positive critical attention and establishing Stroud and Mast as creative forces in a relatively neglected genre. It also engraved their stylistic watermark into the collective mind of their listeners.

Ratatat is more of a sound and less of a band. There’s a strange familiarity that comes with the percussive shaping of their music: the harpsichord twangs and tightly wound guitar riffs are instantly identifiable. Most groups establish their identity with vocals, but Ratatat manages to do it with their sharp and blistering atmospheric beats.

“Breaking Away,” a four-and-a-half minute track on Ratatat,  is still, despite the success of LP3, one of the group’s finest moments. The first minute is a mix of drums and claps backed by a brooding bass line that finally culminates into a harmonious mix of electric “wahs” and “woos.” The next two minutes are compellingly simple in structure but astonishingly complex in their allure, with established hooks and samples piling upon one another until the entire song culminates into a ferocious melting pot of different sounds. “Breaking Away” is a rare treat: a track that never causes you to adjust the rate of your head-bobs or toe-taps while still being able to evolve into an entirely separate beast by the time it finishes.

Unlike Ratatat’s fluid succession of songs on their first album (encapsulated by “Breaking Away”), the 13-track LP3 runs out of gas about mid-way through, with most of the record’s highlights clocking in within the first 20 minutes. Regardless, LP3 serves as a solid addition to Ratatat’s growing catalogue, falling somewhere in between Ratatat and Classics, a hit-or-miss effort released in 2006 that winds up sounding like a rigid self-parody on more than one occasion.

 Classics has a few notable highlights like “Tropicana” and “Loud Pipes” but it ultimately doesn’t break the crest of the wave that the group established with their self-titled release. With LP3, Ratatat takes a few hurried steps back in the right direction.

The Emerson student who advertised the sacrifice of their dignity for a Ratatat ticket managed to snag a spot thanks to a generous scalper. No sex was involved, thankfully, but creative methods may need to be deployed in order to score a ticket to the sold out show, which are already going for $50-60 on StubHub.com.

Ratatat is still finding their niche, but even the group’s missteps are colorful assaults on the senses. These guys can make music.

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