Concert Review: Ratatat @ Fillmore, 9/8

I didn’t know what to expect going into the Ratatat show, but I was, as they say, hella looking forward to it. Usually when I get a new album I like, I exhaust it quickly, playing it over and over and over again throughout the day until I get to the point that it’s so annoying that just one riff can make me hurl a remote at the person in the room responsible for putting the album on. But this never happened with Ratatat’s debut album, Ratatat, which has made appearances on every playlist of mine in the past three years. I’m STILL not sick of it. I was also a huge fan of Classics, but the genius of the voicing on Ratatat’s debut album is what kept me listening.

When LP3 came out, I winced a little as I lifted the headphones to my ears, not quite sure if what I was about to hear would live up to the pedestal I had placed Ratatat upon in my mind. (You can read my CD review, here.)

It was with all those mixed emotions and expectations that I went to the Ratatat show, ready to be taken out of myself and into another world, to a place where guitars and melodies rest on pink clouds drinking lemonade together.

Well that, er, sort of happened. First Panther played. Weird band, Panther. They combine skanked out guitar riffs with devo-like white-funk bass lines and anti-linear songwriting. Oh, and half of it is pre-recorded. I think that this latter fact bothered me quite a bit. I still haven’t figured out why. (Maybe you all can help me.) But maybe being bothered is a good thing. Panther seemed to know that they were confusing their audiences, like the time the lead singer, quite ad-lib-ily asked, “Who has school tomorrow? You shouldn’t call in sick. You should call in sad. Then you can all come over to my house.” And then a pre-recorded track of “come over to my house” came on, looped several times over, and lead right into the next song. They’re doing something, these guys. I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing something. Keep an eye out.

So, Ratatat. Come on guys. I’m ready. Play some luscious, over-the-top major arpeggiations and make me drool. Do it! Or, you could play a bunch of trippy-ass home movies in the background that have been perfectly synced up with your pre-recorded drums and bass (and every other instrument on your new album, LP3 besides guitar and b3). Look, it was a cool show. But what was it besides cool? The texture-centrism of LP3 was ok for an album, but not for a show. You can’t build a show around “branching out”; you need the performance to come back to an emotional core, a MELODIC core.

Sorry, guys. Bit of a rant, I know. And look, I understand why Ratatat branched out. It wasn’t like they were just looking to make a buck - it was because they couldn’t keep doing what they’d done before. It was good stuff, but it had just run its course a bit. Ratatat pretty much stuck with a single formula to create the songs on their previous two albums. So they wanted to experiment, try out some new instrumentation, leave the world of melody altogether. Fine. But I think maybe they didn’t really know what they wanted the final product to look like, because for me, this show lacked any kind of vision or synthesized creative voice. It was just a mish-mash of cool sounds and visuals, which resulted in something cool, but not necessarily something good.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user: kev/null