So to pigeon-hole them before they've even started, Ra Ra Riot are thus: a group with a dynamic similar to Arcade Fire (i.e. many members playing instruments, very intensely), who sound like The Clash (Each Year is so like Lost In The Supermarket) with a slice of Sunderland’s multi-instrumentalist innovators Field Music, and with more than a nod to The Spinto Band. That said, free the pigeon; listen and make up your own mind.
In fact, having waited for months to see Ra Ra Riot play on English soil, their exuberant live extravaganza came within one pint of Guinness of being completely missed. Such was the racket being made by the support acts that an early retreat was made, by all concerned, from the live theatre at the Water Rats (one small room housing a stage barely bigger than a doorstep, a stone's-throw from King's Cross station), back to the solace of bar.
And it would have been easy to stay too, close to the source of the black stuff and wrapped in comfortable analytical discourse regarding Tottenham Hotspur's Premier League demise and a secret kamikaze plot by manager Martin Jol to deliberately get the sack.
Instead, with enough cavalier attitude to give Oliver Cromwell the shakes, we upped sticks and threw the dice of fate in search of something better. And, thank the Lord we found it, albeit already four songs into their set.
For in the time we had been away, the sextet of Syracuse’s (New York, USA) Ra Ra Riot had appeared and filled the room with far more appealing sounds. Six people can be quite a number to get on stage, especially when it is this small, but the confines of the space only enhanced the enmeshed quality of the band's sound.
Thick and deep with strings, guitar fuzz, beats and band interplay the effect was a refreshing barrage of sound. Simple things are done well; the singer (Wesley Miles) can sing, the drummer is in time, the lyrics are interesting (Dying Is Fine is an adaptation of a poem by E.E. Cummings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.e._cummings) pretence is absent, and the all-girl string section is downright sexy.
As violin-playing Alexandra Lawn confirms: "We wait around all day, then drive hours and hours to play a 40-minute slot – once you're up there you're not going to waste time.
"And a lot of the places we play back home it is just us, the bartender and the sound engineer. Our attitude is, even if only five people have come to see us, then that is five more people who have heard our music."
Having just bagged a support slot for The Editors on their upcoming tour of the UK, it seems the days of just playing to a handful of punters is well and truly at an end.
And what is more, Ra Ra Riot are set to record around 12 songs in November/December for their first album; from all accounts it will be a fitting tribute to drummer John Ryan Pike, who died in June.
