By Rashod D. Ollison , rashod.ollison@baltsun.com|December 11, 2008
After the original drummer was found dead in the ocean, the music didn't change much.
The members of the indie rock band Ra Ra Riot were just about to record their debut album when John Pike went missing in the early morning of June 2, 2007, at Wilbur's Point in Fairhaven, Mass. His body was discovered the next day in nearby Buzzards Bay.
The tragedy nearly overwhelmed the six-piece band, which had formed barely a year before Pike died. But still, the group entered the studio. The Rhumb Line, the resulting album, balances the sadness hovering over the sessions with a sometimes-twee outlook on love and life.
"That balance between the melancholy and happy, the simple and the grand - these were things we had been interested in for a long time. We had been intrigued by that balance before the tragedy," says the band's guitarist, Milo Bonacci. He and the rest of Ra Ra Riot (Alexandra Lawn on cello and vocals, Wesley Miles on keyboards and vocals, Mathieu Santos on bass, Rebecca Zeller on violin and Gabriel Duquette on drums) play the Ottobar on Tuesday night.
"The songs had been worked on with John," Bonacci says. "When it came time to record, it wasn't like we were starting from scratch. John had written songs with us and had been so involved. He was still involved even after he was gone."
Released in August, The Rhumb Line ripples with nautical and death imagery, evoking at times a haunted town by the sea. In fact, the album title takes its name from a bar close to Pike's home in Gloucester, Mass. But the music, buoyant with airy melodies, doesn't feel too funereal.
The sense of doom and bitterness typically found in indie rock is supplanted by a touch of sweetness in the music of Ra Ra Riot. This is mostly provided by Miles' thin but attractive lead tenor, which seems to lighten even the most elegiac lyrics. Also, the presence of the clean, sweeping cello and violin lines brightens the music.
"It's very democratic, a communal process," Bonacci says of the band's working relationship. "Somebody may introduce an idea, but everybody develops an idea. And we come up with a refined structure. Sometimes it happens quickly or we put a song on the back burner for a few months. But everybody is involved."
