Ra Ra Riot is an enigmatic band. A mere six months after their formation, this Syracuse sextet worked their way to the stage of the CMJ Music Marathon and shortly thereafter played esteemed festivals like South by Southwest and the South Street Music Festival. The group’s defiance of the standard slow stagger towards acclaim is even more admirable when you take their genre into consideration. Ra Ra Riot’s indie pop niche is usually flooded with ambiguous, recycled material, but The Rhumb Line mixes the instrumental bounciness with the vocal serenity of a Belle and Sebastian ballad. The product can only be described as a tranquil yet danceable medley of sounds.
But, amidst the intertwining melodies of the harmonious strings lies a certain dissonant yearning. The death of John Pike, drummer and primary lyricist, took a great emotional toll on his band mates, which is evident throughout the album in their doleful portrayal of loss. The record contains four re-recordings of material, written by Pike, and six new songs with messages of emotional longing. “Winter ‘05” evokes melancholy: “If you were here/Winter wouldn’t pass quite so slow” while “Dying is Fine”’s bellowing chorus, borrowing from an e e cummings poem of the same name, rings out, “You know that dying is fine but/I wouldn’t like death if death were good.” The Rhumb Line is not mere mourning, it is also about hope. As the band recites on “Oh, La”, “We’ve got a lot to learn from each other/We’ve got to stick together.”
Voice’s Choices: “Dying is Fine”, “Each Year”, “St. Peter’s Day Festival”
