9 Concerts in 10 Days. #1: Ratatat @ The Black Cat, Washington DC 10/2/08
Posted by Val in Concert Reviews, Concerts
Although it’s been suggested that I see way WAY too many concerts, I rarely get the chance to actually post as many reviews as I’d like up here on The Yellow Stereo. This is what happens when one doesn’t work by a computer. My editor at DCist was picking on me for seeing such a high volume of shows in such a short span of time and quite honestly – she’s within her right. Nine shows in ten days is at best, really dedicated and at worst, batshit insane. So why not have fun on my way to the loony bin and give mini-reviews of each of the nine shows?
I thought that I’d end up having to see Ratatat up in good old Baltimore since the DC show was long long sold out – and go on a nine show in nine day concert binge. But thankfully, a recent (awesome) acquaintance had an extra ticket for this show and I grabbed at that so fast since using public transit > one hour commute in each direction on a Sunday night. Despite being long long sold out, there’s this stereotype about DC concertgoers that they don’t dance and I was afraid that the crowd at Ratatat would be too cool to bust a move.
Thankfully, I was wrong. Although the crowd stuck to headbobbing for the first two songs of Dark Side of the Moon-esque slow jams. But then they hit the percussion, and the place really started to get moving. For the uninitiated, the brilliance of Ratatat is that they manage to pull in both the fans of dancey electropop and the old-school rock purists who realize that, they’re using straight from the arena rock god guitar riffs on top of those keyboards and sampled beats. This also meant that when the crowd was into it (for songs like encore closer “Seventeen Years,” especially) that it wasn’t one organized jump. Everyone was going apeshit to their own drummer and really, it worked.
The band barely talked. They didn’t need to. Their visuals, which ranged from the absurd (the band’s name in Atari font) to the more absurd (what looked like a slowed-down drugged-up version of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” video) worked brilliantly with the sort of influences that they were pulling from. If the availability of public transit lines were no issue, I’d have gladly remained in that audience for another hour.
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