Shoe gazing gets old. Not that I don't love the shoe gazers, it's that I can only take them in increasingly small doses. I discovered the shoe gazers in college and the ones I discovered between the years 1994 and 2000 tend to be the ones I still get the most excited about. If Belle and Sebastian release a new album, I'm probably going to purchase it, sight unheard.
However, if a new shoe gazing band shows up on the scene, I'm probably not likely to give them a listen. Which usually works out fine, but I run the risk of missing a band like Ra Ra Riot. Thankfully, I didn't actually miss the band Ra Ra Riot, or their brilliant debut, The Rhumb Line.
While it would be tempting to call Ra Ra Riot a shoe gazer band (they certainly have those tendencies), what separates them from typical shoe gazer fair is their exuberance, their vitality, their excitement. These are shoe gazers who looked up long enough to discover a great big world beyond their shoes. This album celebrates that discovery.
While the album feels young and vigorous, it isn't unwilling to address dark subjects (their original drummer and co-writer, John Pike, died last summer from drowning), but understands that the darkness must be met with some degree of light if we mean to overcome it. And overcome it they do. Their weapons are the mournful moan of violin and cello mixed with transcendent vocals and purposeful lyrics. Think Andrew Bird. Think Peter Adams. Those vocals might even make you think Jeff Buckley (was that too much?).
The Rhumb Line is an album that takes anger and sadness head on, refusing to try and defeat them by pretending they don't exist. Ra Ra Riot is a band that is joyful, though they've considered all the facts, and they inspire their listeners to do the same.
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