120 Days Trumps Ratatat

Despot, Norway's 120 Days (one hundred and twenty days is a lot of syllables, by the way) and Ratatat played Richards on Richards last night. I wasn't sure what to expect - I had heard from friends that they were most excited for 120 days but the experimental fusion of Ratatat's hip hop, electronica and rock fusion seemed appealing enough to me. However, my expectations that the headliner would deliver the most precious goods flip flopped.

I almost didn't even attend, and when I arrived at Richards there was an unapologetic sign informing me that tickets were sold out. Luckily, the bouncer caught my distress and let me know that a few extras had been released at the door, so $18 later I was in.

120 days: rocked the house, flawless show and enough of a spectacle that I was actually watching the band and not the antics of the crowd. And Despot is a little NY rapper with some big lyrics - a couple of times during his short set I was like, "Whoah, good line".

I should preface the following by saying that Ratatat is a solid group (Evan Mast and Mike Stroud were joined by a third tonight: a keyboarding character my friend dubbed the autistic cousin. I thought his tight-butt-pelvis-thrusting looked a bit like he had a case of the runs but I guess those are the new moves these days?) with obvious skill. But my feeling after a couple of songs was, "Meh, I've heard one song, I've heard them all. I'm out." I was aching for the guitar to go away for a bit and hear some of their new hip-hop remixes, but it didn't happen in time for bedtime.

Their sound actually reminded me of The Advantage, another experimental band that does old school Nintendo game cover songs, except Ratatat has more of a hip hop influence. Unfortunately, the guitar strongly overpowered the hip hop beats I wanted to hear.

My feeling was, at least they're trying something new, right? But my more music-savvy friends insisted they were playing the same guitar riff over and over again, with a different beat that was simply being drowned out. All in all, I'd say that Ratatat may be a repetitive novelty act, but it's a moderately sweet one at that.

Credit to Sealed With a Kiss for promoting the show.

Photo: Ratatat