Live: Ratatat, 1st May, 2008

San Fran Bathhouse
Thursday 1st May

Increasingly trendy North American two-piece Ratatat are somewhat of an illkept secret in nerdy indie circles, and that’s probably because their synth & guitarbased instrumental music is really pretty damn good. So you can understand my complete surprise at how their live show at a totally packed Bodega turned out to be a total non-event.

Support band Little Pictures once again failed to interest – let alone warm up – a crowd away from their sceney friends at Mighty Mighty. The very fact that this ‘band’ which produces such a shallow and exploitative representation of music (including only a patronisingly simple synthesiser melody and a drum machine) was chosen to open for such a successful and talented international act is a great embarrassment for New Zealand music. We constantly wank off about how deep and strong musical talent is in this country and yet the best opener we can scrape together for Ratatat were these pieces of shit. Seriously, was I the only one cringing?

Luckily, Ratatat didn’t leave us waiting long. They appeared to a tremendous cheer (with a third musician in tow) and burst straight into ‘Montanita’ from their sophomore album Classics. They were impressive at first, guitarist Mike Stroud rocked back and forth energetically at his guitar while Evan Mast busied himself at the keys. However, this on stage front varied little throughout their entire set and after the first few songs the sight got very repetitive and boring.

The sound quality also wasn’t up to scratch. The different musical lines were almost indistinguishable in the wall of sound coming from the speakers, and the tiny nuances and detailed differences that makes Ratatat’s music so good were sadly lost. However that didn’t stop the crowd from enjoying themselves and jumping along to favourites ‘Lex’, “Wild Cat’ and ‘Seventeen Years’. But really the only thing that saved this gig from being a bad one was that fact that Ratatats’ music is excellently composed and still enjoyable in a tiresome atmosphere. Apart from that, it was a bit of a yawn-fest.