Albums : Ra Ra Riot : Beta Love
Albums : Ra Ra Riot : Beta Love
Listen To Ra Ra Riot : Beta Love
Who Is RA RA Riot?
Who Is RA RA Riot?
Ra Ra Riot is an American indie
rock band from Syracuse, New York, consisting of vocalist Wes Miles, bassist
Mathieu Santos, guitarist Milo Bonacci, violinist Rebecca Zeller, and drummer
Kenny Bernard.
The Band formed in January 2006,
playing at houses and venues around the Syracuse University campus. They
recorded a demo in February 2006. The band started to attract attention due to
their energetic live shows, enough to gain an appearance at the CMJ Music
Marathon, fewer than six months after their formation. Following this
appearance, their live show received the first of several favorable reviews
from SPIN.com, who called them "one of the best young bands we've heard in
a really long time".They went on to open for Art Brut and Bow Wow Wow
in New York City, toured the UK twice on their own, then returned, opening
for the Editors (footage of which can be found on Crackle); they also toured
North America supporting Tokyo Police Club. Their first solo headlining tour of
the U.S. was completed in 2007, and in early 2008, they embarked on a
second. The band was also invited to play the Iceland Airwaves Festival, in
Reykjavík, Iceland. They have recorded three sessions on the national online
radio station WOXY and three for the acclaimed Daytrotter sessions at
Futureappletree studio 1 in Rock Island, Illinois.
In 2007, they made their first
appearance at South by Southwest and headlined a show at the Seaport Music
Festival in New York City. The band returned to appear again at the South by
Southwest Music Conference in March 2008.
After a show in Providence,
Rhode Island, the band's original drummer, John Ryan Pike, of Hamilton,
Massachusetts, went missing under suspicious circumstances in the early morning
of June 2, 2007 at Wilbur's Point in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. His body was
discovered the following day in nearby Buzzards Bay; Pike was believed to have
drowned. Ra Ra Riot issued a statement a few weeks after Pike's funeral that
they would continue as a band. The investigation is ongoing.
In July 2007 an eponymous EP of
6 songs was released on the Rebel Group label.
In the winter of 2007, the band
signed to major label V2 Records. To celebrate their new label deal, Ra Ra Riot
released "Dying Is Fine" and "Each Year (RAC Mix)" on
7" vinyl as an A/B single. In December 2007, the band announced that they
had finished recording new songs for their debut LP. During their show in
Cambridge, MA on April 25, 2008, the band announced their new album "would
be released in August. If not August then September" 2008.
On May 19, 2008, the band
announced that they had signed to Barsuk Records. Their debut album The Rhumb
Line was released on August 19, 2008 in the United States and Canada. It was
released in Europe via V2/Cooperative Music on September 22, 2008.
The music video for "Can
You Tell" won Best Music Video in the 2009 Finger Lakes Film Festival on
November 7, 2009.
In the spring of 2009, Barsuk
released an EP, Can You Tell, featuring remixes, early demos and live
recordings.
The band released their second
album called The Orchard on August 24, 2010. The Orchard was produced by Ra
Ra Riot and Andrew Maury, and 9 of the 10 tracks were mixed by Death Cab For
Cutie's Chris Walla, and one mixed by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij. The
band played several new songs from the album during a February performance in
Brooklyn, New York.
In January 2011, Ra Ra Riot were
nominated for The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards under the Pop/Rock Album
category for The Orchard. Also in 2011, their song "Boy" was
featured in a Honda Civic commercial and "Boy" was used in the
episode "A History of Violins" of the TV show Royal Pains.
On February 10, 2012, cellist
Alexandra Lawn announced that she would be leaving the band.
The band's third studio album
"Beta Love" is set to be released on January 22, 2013. The album will
be the band's first studio album since the departure of cellist Alexandra Lawn
and will mark a shift in their musical style away from their earlier baroque
pop and more towards synthpop
Beta Love Review
New wave of the ’80s had a major
jones for science. Defying the sex obsession of the ’60s and ’70s, the songs of
the subsequent decade found a new way to be shocking by turning eros into a
mathematical equation. Computer love became the rage.
Skip ahead a few decades and
synth-pop still thrives — but without so tight a connection to tubes and wires.
Perhaps that disconnect tugged
at Ra Ra Riot, because on the new CD by this young Brooklyn-based band, they
rekindle synth-pop’s love of chemical reactions and techno-dreams.
With pluck, they sing about a
“Binary Mind” and “Beta Love” while, at times, directly shunning the human
kind. The group took inspiration for this from the sci-fi novels of William
Gibson and the theorizing of futurist Ray Kurzweil. The science connection cuts
deep for the band. Frontman Wes Miles majored in physics in the place the group
formed: Syracuse University.
Even so, the chirpy new wave of
“Beta Love” lands a long way — in sound and subject — from the style that first
gave this promising group its profile.
Ra Ra Riot’s debut in 2008, “The
Rhumb Line,” put cello and violin on equal footing with guitar, bass and drums.
The result? Chamber-indie-pop of a striking variety. Their follow-up disc,
2010’s “The Orchard,” lacked the sweetness and fine tunes of their debut. In
that context, “Beta Love” could be seen as a virtual apology, though it also
reflects something simpler. The band pared down its lineup for this CD, losing
one string player.
In the tight new configuration
every sound serves the melody. It’s highly-focused pop, with buffed tunes and
hooks everywhere you turn. When strings appear, they square off against the
synths, providing extra rhythm rather than a focal point.
True to the period they refer
to, there’s a dinkiness to the synth sounds. They sound like toys, flimsy in a
fun way. They’re well-suited to Miles’ voice, a boyishly bright instrument that
moves easily into falsetto. It’s a nether-sex voice, androgynous, if not neutered.
That flatters the lyrics, which deal with sex and love as problems to be solved
and shelved.
In “Binary Mind,” Miles sings
about simplifying his thinking “so I can forget how lonely feels.” In “Shut
Off,” he powers down his emotions.
It’s a wonderfully ironic series
of ideas - using antique synthesizers to serenade futurism, and employing a
chaste voice to ruminate on erotic need.
It all comes to a head in “It’s
Too Much,” in which Miles echoes Marvin Gaye’s entreaty to “wake up, wake up”
from “Sexual Healing” — but with neuroses subbed for eroticism. If the jerky
rhythms, chilly synths and pointy tunes that surround Miles’ voice provide the
opposite of funk, they’ve got their own smart kind of soul.
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Sources : Ra Ra Riot Photo | Listen To Beta Love | Ra Ra Riot Biography | Beta Love Review
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