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>hosis of ‘Ra G R§. c Riot
Despite a Tragic Loss, The Band is Reborn
T here are three things you might as
well know about Milo Bonacci. First,
he's the bespectacled guitarist for
Syracuse, NY-based band Ra Ra Riot, where
he lends a rougher, serrated quality to the
sextet's grainy chamber pop. He also seems
like a pretty nice guy. And finally, he makes
quite a passable caterpillar.
At least, that's what one
could gather from the video
for "Dying Is Fine," a mixture
of live action and animation
in which Bonacci and bassist
Mathieu Santos start out as
happy rock-and-roll caterpil
lars, before being imprisoned
in a bug collector's jar. This
might sound like some heavy
psychedelics, but the circle-
of-life song and video seem
closer tc tasteful children's
programming than to Iron
Butterfly.
The song, from the band's
melodious yet melancholy
self-titled 2007 EP, was inspired in part by
e.e. Cummings. It features the sprightly cho
rus, "You know that dying is fine, but maybe /
I wouldn't like death if death were good / Not
even if death were good." The track proved
bizarrely prescient, when the band’s 23-year-
old drummer, John Pike, died suddenly early
last June.
When Pike's family formed the John Ryan
Pike Memorial Foundation to provide musical
resources to underprivileged kids, Ra Ra Riot
put on a benefit concert in Boston called
"Friends of John," which also featured Tokyo
Police Club and Vampire Weekend. "(The foun
dation] was started because that's the kind
of person John was," says Bonacci. "If he
was interested in something, he was going to
really learn about it, and know and exploie
and discover. He taught himself guitar, piano
and drums." Because Pike was integral to the
band's writing, Ra Ra Riot had to compen
sate for his absence when recording its new
album at the end of last year with producer
Ryan Hadlock (Blonde Redhead, The Gossip,
Stephen Malkmus).
"John contributed in a lot of ways to
melodic and structural ideas, and that sort
of stuff," says Bonacci, "but also, he wrote
a lot of the lyrics. This time around, it was
[Wesley Miles], our singer, who wrote the lyr
ics; before, he would always work with John,
so it was always a collaborative process. More
or less, our overall process of writing hasn't
changed, it's just the people contributing to
the process have changed."
Those people currently
include Bonacci and Santos,
vocalist and keyboardist
Miles, drummer Cameron
Wisch, and the string sec
tion of Alexandra Lawn
(cello) and Rebecca Zeller
(violin). The group originally
formed in January 2006 at
Syracuse University, where
its members were majoring in
everything from painting to
astrophysics.
Playing house parties and
campus events, they didn't
even bother recording until
they wanted to play outside
Syracuse and needed music to send to pro
spective venues. By the fall of '06, the then-
graduated members found themselves quite
removed from their original casual jams.
"We were no longer a college band,''
Bonacci says. "We started to think of our
selves as a real band in the world. Ever since
then, we're just trying to live up to that."
Onstage, the band is a constant flurry of
activity, picking up secondary instruments
mid-song, contributing a bit of tambourine
here, some keyboard there. Wisch's tempos
are always pushing ahead, to further goad the
band to fresh exuberance. And if the string
section steals the spotlight from Miles, it
doesn't faze him; it seems that for Ra Ra Riot,
having a singer, rather than an egomaniacal
frontman, too, is fine.
Currently, the band is wrapping up the
album, after touring the U.K. a couple
of times. Bonacci recalls a special gig in
Reykjavik, Iceland, where "a larger percentage
of people... were singing along than I've ever
seen at any of our shows. I have no idea how
they knew our songs, but they did, and it was
completely unexpected."
Moments of triumph in distant lands aside,
Bonacci projects a humble and matter-of-fact
attitude. "None of us are expecting that we're
going to be doing this fore/er, or anything,"
he says. "We all have other potential careers
to get back to.”
Aaron Jentzen
This article was published in the Pittsburgh City
Psper\r\ January 2008.
WHO: The Cribs, Ra Ra Riot, Jeffrey Lewis
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN. Monday. March 17, 9 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $10 advance
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26 FLAGP0LE.C0M • MARCH 12, 2008 NEWS & FEATURES 1 CALENDAR I MOVIES I A&E I MUSIC I COMICS 8. ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS