Ra Ra Riot

January 10, 2013

Ra Ra Riot

New York chamber popsters sing of robot love

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Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2013

In an indication of their popularity in Japan, New York indie rockers Ra Ra Riot released their third album Beta Love on January 9 here, a full two weeks ahead of its American release.

Cellist Alexandra Lawn left the band earlier this year, giving the remaining five members an opportunity to rethink how they wanted to compose, record, and perform music.

Ra Ra Riot’s previous two albums The Rhumb Line and Orchard explored sentimental themes and catchy melodies with a chamber-pop palette. Beta Love continues to play with these sounds, now evolving with synths and electronic drumbeats. Thematically, the album deals with the inner lives of robots, which makes sense given the band’s newfound technological savvy.

“It feels like a new band. Our cellist left, and we were wanting to change our style of writing and the way we arranged music,” frontman and singer Wes Miles told Metropolis over the phone. “We spent six months recording with producer Dennis Herring [Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello]. He was a great producer for us. It was a big change—there was a lot of quick and dirty editing.”

Miles insists the band’s approach has shifted. “We moved away from the attitude of every instrument needing to be precious, and did some paring back, changing the attitude of having strings on every song or even real drums on every song,” he says. “We incorporated more electronic sounds on the new album. While recording the songs we asked ourselves ‘Does it serve the melody and the lyrics by not adding parts that aren’t necessary?’”

Miles told Metropolis that Ra Ra Riot have had fun playing Japan several times in the past few years and are looking forward to being back. At the Hostess Club Weekender mini-festival, Feb 2-3, they will be supporting Beta Love and playing with their friends and fellow New Yorkers, Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors.