I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve heard the name Ra Ra Riot. I wish I could take credit for that. I wish I could run into your bedroom with a copy of The Rhumb Line in hand and say, “Dude… you most certainly must listen to this… stat!” We would listen, jump on the bed, and pretend your stuffed animals were Kristi Yamaguchi. Unfortunately though, Ra Ra Riot has been featured around music venues and blogs for a few years now. Between the release of a praised EP and the death of their original drummer, John Pike, the Syracuse New York band has been quite discussed.

So… heck ya! We finally hold in our hands their full-length debut album. It is summer time and I can hear this and that chirping and singing outside of my window. Inside of my window The Rhumb Line bellows like noontime at the church yard. It is so many things packaged into a rock n roll record. It is a melodic tongue twisting collection of stories to be told to sleepy children. It is a symphonic race car carrying pizzas that need to be delivered in the next 25 minutes or else. It is a tribute to a friend who left before his time, but is tapping his feet diligently from above. Most of all — it is fun. It is more fun than a water slide to a twelve-year-old. It is probably more fun than a barn-raising party to the farmer’s daughter. It is much more fun than what you are listening to right now. The drums are driving and the bass and guitar play off those drums here and there, only to synch up and explode over and over again with a string section adding quite a bit of character to the whole shape.

I don’t want you to think you are receiving the latest dance-rock mindless yippity-dee album of the moment though. Ra Ra Riot have something all their own here. To utilize geometry — if fun is the X axis, then creativity and orchestration are the y axis and the z axis and Ra Ra Riot have built a giant cube that is about to swallow us all as it floats through the sky, pushing aside clouds and huge stacks of graph paper. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if that is an accurate metaphor. Would it work if the shape was more of a huge exclamation point? The more I think of the album, the more I think of an exclamation point flying about like a hawk. It soars through the air then lands on a bearded man’s arm and shrieks towards the woods. The bearded man, inspired by the mountainous melody lines his exclamation point exclaims, moves to the mountains with a discman, a pair of headphones and his exclamation point. There, he lassos the headphone cord around the exclamation points dot and swings beneath it as it bellows from above…

I asked for another opinion of the album;

“Fun, this is hardly just fun Jon,” says my girlfriend. “This is heavy and poetic and shouldn’t be simplified to just fun. I mean, come on.” She is probably right. I should have never asked. She is usually right; there is more to this album than there is to a game of Twister. It is powerful, meaningful, and dramatic. I need to rewrite this whole album review. We listen again… this time, a little later at night we are standing, tapping, swaying, humming along—- she adds, “It is fun though.”

Ra Ra Riot’s First Daytrotter Session
Stay tuned for the Riot’s triumphant encore session, posting Sept. 15!

Jonathan Eaton plays in The Spinto Band and their new record Moonwink is out Oct. 7 on Park The Van Records.