Last night I saw New York indie band Ra Ra Riots play live at Kings College, it was filled with drama, upbeat music and the random screams of the words “CELLO” and “VIOLIN” that still makes me giggles like a prepubescent school girl. I guess when you haven’t a clue of the band members, you just start shouting the instrument they’re playing to simplify things.
Ra ra riots were originally set to play at the borderline, but turns out the demand for tickets were a lot higher than they anticipated, resulting in a sold out show which ultimately led them to play at Kings College which can contain about 700 living humanoids (all singing and dancing). They’ve recently released their debut album “The Rhumb Line” which contains much more “final” versions of tracks from their self titled EP.
I really liked the Kings College venue compared to Borderline, the lights were definitely better and though it wasn’t as intimate, you were still practically able to hi5 the band members due to lack of photo pits (more on that later). There were two support bands for Ra Ra Riots, The Answering Machine and some other band who’s name I will perhaps never know (a little help here?).
The Answering Machine were pretty cool, it was funny listening to the crowd commenting on how cute the bassist was (comment here if it was you!). The crowd were enjoying it and there were constantly requesting them to play their latest single “Cliffer”. If you like how they sound, go see them as they will be playing at Hoxton Bar and Kitchen as well as other venues in England.
Ra Ra Riots themselves were upbeat and fun, it was nice seeing the band dancing around on stage whilst playing tracks such as Each Year, Winter ‘05 (or ‘04?), latest single Can You Tell and one of my favourites, Ghost Under Rocks. Here’s a video of them at it with Ghost Under Rocks:
I hope you’re getting used to the camera swaying! The singer Wes Miles was polite and bantered with the crowd every now and then, happy that this was their biggest show in London and telling us how special this gig was to them. They finished with Dying if Fine which I failed to record (damnit!) whilst Wes dished out some hi5s to the crowd (but it was more like hand claps).
Note on the photo above the bassist has four hands, two for clapping and the other two for guitar’ing. They came back to play two more tracks. It felt slightly anti climatic as I would have thought Dying is Fine was the song for them to go out on rather than songs that weren’t on the album.
The vocals were somewhat quiet though my shyness prevented me from heckling at Wes to turn it up (though he was wearing earplugs so he probably didn’t hear a thing). They played a total of 14 songs (including encore) which seemed pretty little compared to other gigs (though take it in mind it’s their first LP). Overall it was definitely a good gig, it started off a bit shakey but near the end everyone was well into it and dancing along happily like it was 1999 again. After the gig I went home and ate some meat for dinner.
Definitely check their latest album out if you haven’t and if they’re playing in a venue near you, go (and make sure continue to confuse the cellist and violinist by shouting “CELLO” and “VIOLIN”).
