Whats the most significant thing youve ever accomplished on your laptop? Paid off a credit card? Logged a seven-letter word on Scrabulous? Constructed your first-rate Evite? Hey, no judgments that shits great. It just doesnt have the staying power of Ratatat, the 2004 self-titled debut disc that guitarist Mike Stroud and keyboardist-producer Evan Mast ingeniously cobbled together on Strouds old Mac PowerBook. Layered with slicing guitar riffs, hip-hop-style sequencing and the Brooklyn duos signature reverse-warped Mellotron overdubs, the album yielded tracks like Seventeen Years and Germany to Germany and loudly proclaimed Ratatat as one of indie rocks great instrumental treasures an act admired by rave-minded sensualists and indie-rock elitists alike. Three albums later, with a high-profile Kid Cudi collaboration and Late Night with David Letterman appearance behind them, Stroud and Mast remain cross-genre darlings, even if their last two long plays titled, logically, LP3 (2008) and LP4 (2010) lacked some of the raw infectiousness of Ratatat and their even-better encore Classics (2006).
Sat., Sept. 25, 8:30 p.m., 2010