Search - Ra Ra Riot :: The Rhumb Line

No, it's not "rum..." No, it's not "Rhumba..."

Susan Petrone | Cleveland | 12/16/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The death of a loved one does strange things to rock musicians. You can either end up with schlock like "Tell Laura I Love Her" or the magnificence that is The Rhumb Line. The absence of founding member/drummer John Pike informs every note, but this isn't downer funereal music. It's good rock and roll. The prescient "Dying Is Easy" has a deceptively happy backbeat over lyrics that ponder the meaning of it all: "Is this it/maundering about and/all I have is too much to/to understand/one can only love/life until its ending." While that song is on a lot of "best song of 2008" lists, my favorite track is a tight race between the mature romantic longing of "Can You Tell" and the truly gorgeous "Winter '05." I don't know if the latter was written before or after the death of John Pike, but for my money, it's the best requiem for a lost friend since The Pretenders "Back on the Chain." One of the wonderful things about this album and about Ra Ra Riot as a band is the seamless blending guitar, bass, violin, and cello. Too often, bands will add strings to a song or two as an enhancement. Ra Ra Riot uses each instrument completely, with the strings adding nice counterpart to songs like "Suspended in Gaffa." Clearly, I've grown quite fond of this album in a very short time. Ra Ra Riot is frequently compared to Vampire Weekend--they both have the same East Coast/Ivy League feel, but Vampire Weekend is freshman year--fun, innocent, and naïve, while Ra Ra Riot is senior year--more substantive, more complex, tinged with regret and loss, yes, but also full of great promise."