Get ready, Charlottesville - there's about to be a riot. Critically acclaimed indie rockers Ra Ra Riot will be in town March 4, treating the Jefferson Theater to their unique blend of pulsating Anglophile rock and swooning chamber-pop.
Ra Ra Riot's second album The Orchard was released last August, and it is safe to say they successfully avoided a sophomore slump. The upbeat, often manic tracks are reminiscent of fellow alt-pop darlings Vampire Weekend and Coconut Records. The soft, almost delicate vocals of lead singer Wes Miles and twitchy strings of violinist Rebecca Zeller and cellist Alexandra Lawn, however, make Ra Ra Riot's sound difficult to place in any particular genre. Fortunately, the indie umbrella is fairly all-encompassing - although with The Orchard reaching as high as No. 36 on the Billboard 200 album charts, the Syracuse group has transcended the realm of relative obscurity that plagues so many up-and-coming alternative bands.
The band formed when its members were undergraduates at Syracuse University in January 2006. Bassist Mathieu Santos took the time to chat with tableau about the group's formation.
"We all went to college together, and that's how we all met," Santos explained. "None of us really knew each other before the band started, but Milo [Bonacci, formerly of Gym Class Heroes], our guitar player, sort of assembled us. He knew all of us through different areas."
Santos went on to admit that the band had no intentions of being anything but a "house party band" at Syracuse. With the older members graduating in the spring of 2006, Santos assumed the band would break up and the gang would move on to other careers, but they were surprised at how rapidly they gained popularity around campus.
"All these things started happening," Santos said about the band's first semester together. "People started coming out to shows and were responding really well. It's been kind of nice because we didn't expect it to become anything really. Everything we've accomplished so far has been a great surprise to us, so we're taking it all in stride."
Less than six months after it formed, Ra Ra Riot was tapped to play at the prestigious College Music Journal Music Marathon. Its performance received overwhelmingly positive feedback and prompted SPIN.com to call the group "one of the best young bands we've heard in a really long time." Since then, life has moved pretty fast for the 20-somethings: they released a self-titled EP, enjoyed the considerable success of their first full-length album The Rhumb Line and headlined two tours by the end of 2008.
In the midst of its growing fame, however, tragedy struck the group when drummer John Ryan Pike was found dead in June 2007 in a Massachusetts bay, where he is believed to have drowned. A few weeks after Pike's funeral, the members collectively decided to continue as a band, and Kenny Bernard eventually became the new drummer. The harrowing events of that summer brought the group closer together, and Santos insisted that they enjoy a "familial vibe."
"We're definitely like a family," he said. "I think it's kind of unique that we didn't know each other ahead of time, and I was surprised at how well we've all got along."
The band's strong relationships translate into a highly collaborative, creative process that helps explain the band's dynamic sound.
"It's a very democratic process," Santos said of the group's song-writing methods. "It's a little different for each song. I guess some songs will have a more vocal melody and lyrics, and then we'll flesh out the rest. Other songs will start with the chord progression, and we'll go from there. Since I'm the bass player, I'll work on the rhythmic elements with Milo."
Santos cited classic 1980s artists U2, The Police and Phil Collins as influences on Ra Ra Riot's sound but also placed importance on the varied individual tastes of the members.
"Everyone in the band has really specific individual tastes, which is fun because sometimes that comes through in the songwriting," he said. "Also, as a band we go through different phases together; we were listening to a lot of '70s music when we were working on The Orchard and a lot of Wings and Fleetwood Mac. We definitely overlap on the more classic stuff."
As for the future, the group is currently touring in the United States and will head to Japan at the end of April before starting up another U.S. tour in the fall. Santos said the group probably will return to the studio in early 2012, but nothing is set in stone.
"I think that we have a little momentum going, and I think we want to see how far we can take it and get the music out there to as many people as possible," Santos said. "Our goal has always been to just have fun"
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