"Classics" remains resolutely instrumental, but the band has introduced a wealth of new sounds, from acoustic and slide guitar to sleigh bells and cello. Their vastly improved production and writing makes this record a refinement of their art. "Ratatat lay squealing metal harmonies over choppy Neptunes-style dance thumps, then break into pastoral waves of keyboard tone, riding dub tempos and hip-hop struts. They're crotch-pumping arena pimps and introverted minimalists..." - Blender. "Stroud and Mast have come up with some catchy melodies over light, snappy bass lines in what sounds like something tailored for the headphones" - Urb.
atatat
Classics
[XL; 2006]
Rating: 6.0
Forgive Ratatat their soundtracky innocuousness. People love this band's M83-on-Wellbutrin sound for its one great gimmick-- multiple styles of music mashed together under digital anesthesia and performed with waiting room Muzak primness. They're the Urban Outfitters of recorded sound: everything chewed up, fed through a ringer, or otherwise digested, and handed down two years later to the kids as avant and edgy. Wham, bam, 4.2.
Except Ratatat complicate things by busting mad hooks. "Seventeen Years", "El Pico", and "Breaking Away" from their self-titled debut were all anthemic and new-sounding enough to hold ears through the album's filler. Those songs hinted at great heights (never reached) and profound depth (never plumbed to). Listeners probably wouldn't have been so patient if Evan Mast and Mike Stroud weren't expert programmers, indulging in pretty atmospherics that they seldom dared disturb with industrious tempos or outsize dynamics.
Classics is more varied in texture and tempo and tone than its predecessor. But aside from "Lex", a pretty obvious "Seventeen Years" rehash, and "Wildcat", which samples actual fucking panther roars, there are no curtain raisers, just a whole lot more suggestion. The album downplays the group's flair for booming ghetto blaster beats, so now we can actually hear all the styles being watered down. "Tropicana" almost pulls off "Magical Mystery Tour" psychedelia, employing jittery string plucks and marching drums to inoffensive effect. "Gettysburg"'s title promises garrisons and battlefields of clay, but the song's galloping beat and ethereal organ are less evocative.
Many tracks involve atavistic or vaguely ethnic sounds. "Montanita" flips a deconstructed tango rhythm but a lounged-out xylophone confuses things. "Swisha" aims for a roiling spaghetti Western feel, which is almost exciting. Its cinematic quality is no accident. Like the band itself, Classics sounds like it was designed to serve something-- a movie or a video game or a Power Point presentation. The biggest difference is brow height: Ratatat would've sounded great behind a game of Tetris; Classics strives to soundtrack the next Wes Anderson flick. Both albums beg for a visual component. This one just assumes applying for a more complex job is the same as actually being more complex.
-Sam Ubl, August 21, 2006
Review by Marisa Brown
There's something strangely melancholic about Ratatat's sophomore record, Classics. Something that rests behind the dancey drum machine beats and the quirky synths, or even the alternating guitars. Outwardly it's a fun album, triumphant and full of majestic refrains and riffs -- you could play it for your indie rock friends if you wanted to get them to dance a little and were too afraid to play Daft Punk or Juan Atkins -- but there's still something in it, introspection gracenoted between the intricate (but never too ornate or over-complicated or even lush) instrument layers and classical arpeggios, contemplation sitting in bittersweet descents and acoustic guitar chords, French cinema- and IDM-induced reflection, that makes it somehow all very sad. It's music for the soundtrack of a film in which even though the sky is clear -- there is sun, an open road perhaps -- the characters have difficulty smiling. Even the more "upbeat" songs, "Lex," "Tropicana," or "Wildcat," for example, never completely shed their pensive skins, rub off the dirt that smudges their bellies and faces. Classics is a record that demands a bit of attention, something to assure it that you hear each phrase, each contradiction, each sound as it enters and leaves. Something to assure it that you know the spaces in which little happens are as important as those that are full. There are no solos here: just the comings and goings of thoughts and feelings and sounds, and though there is a circularity to the album, it's not boring; rather it just allows time for everything that Ratatat are trying to convey to manifest itself fully. Through its subtlety, Classics celebrates the nature and resilience of the human spirit while simultaneously acknowledging its defects, everything and anything you could ever ask an album to be, and nothing more, which is just enough.
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