Personnel: Claire Bryant (cello); Young Churf (harpsichord).

Additional personnel: Claire Bryant, Young Churf.

Recording information: Casa De Exitos, Brooklyn, NY (11/2003-03/2006); Pink Felt Studios, NY (11/2003-03/2006).

Ratatat established their eclectic take on instrumental rock on their 2004 self-titled debut. The follow-up, CLASSICS, released in 2006, improves on the band's intriguing mix of dancey, hip hop-influenced beats, stadium-sized guitars, burbling bass, swirling synths, and various instrumental exotica. Falling somewhere between post rock, electronica, prog rock, and indie rock, CLASSICS blends genres deftly, throwing in a wealth of musical ideas and just enough postmodern irony to keep things cheeky. Ratatat's giddy fusion has enabled them to play bills with acts as diverse as Interpol and Mouse on Mars; CLASSICS finds them honing their stylistic studio mix-mash to a fine art.

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. ~ Marisa Brown