Chatting about cats and The Orchard with Ra Ra Riot

Debuting new material at live shows is always tricky business, but judging from the audience’s reaction at Bumbershoot on Sunday, you wouldn’t know that Ra Ra Riot‘s second full-length, The Orchard, has only been out two weeks. The sartorially-savvy  indie-rockers are just hitting the pavement for a national tour, which beats returning to school at Syracuse University.  Behind Seattle Center’s admittedly janky Fun Forest amusement “park,” violinist Becca Zeller and bassist Mathieu Santos spoke about how the Syracuse six-piece stays sane on the road and naturally, about cats.

Treeswingers (T): So you guys are just kind of in the beginning of your tour for your new record, The Orchard. How has the audience been reacting to your new stuff?

Becca (B): Pretty good.

Mathieu (M): Pretty well so far, I think.

B: Just been like slowly adding more and more songs each show.

M: Sneakin’ them in there. But yeah, there’ve been people singing along to the new songs already—

B: Dancing…

M: —responding well, yeah.

T: How would you guys describe your sound evolution from The Rhumb Line two years ago to The Orchard now?

M: I think we’ve just gotten a lot more comfortable writing as a group and arranging as a group and working together. The Rhumb Line, you know, like most first albums is kind of a collection of songs that we had accumulated over the first couple years. Whereas with The Orchard, we just sorta got to start from scratch and write an entirely new body of work together, which is really fun. I think it’d been so long since we got to work on new material, I think everyone was really excited to start the whole process. We produced the new album ourselves so I think that gave us a lot more confidence to try new things and explore new ideas.

T: Would you guys prefer the city or the orchard?

B: It depends what for.  For writing and recording I prefer the orchard, but for everyday life, right now I’m a city girl. <to Mat> You’re a mixed boat.

M: I’m a little bit of a mix, yeah. I always want the other when I’m in one. If I’m in the city I’m like, “I need to get out of the city,” and then I’ll go home and I’ll be like, “Aw, man, I’m bored.”

B: I think it’s about balance, about having both, I guess.

T: You guys are going to be on tour throughout the rest of the year. What do you guys have to take on tour? What is the thing that keeps you sane?

B: Probably not so much as we take as opposed what we do with our time. We’re becoming better at figuring out what to do. Like Mat’s been going to more sports games.

M: Yeah I went to a Mets game last week, been to a couple hockey games as well. Yeah, it get’s a little easier each tour.

B: I don’t think there’s like—the one thing that I bring with me that provides—

M: Laptop.

B:—laptop, yeah. <laughs> Laptop and headphones.

M: Everyone is always, like nighttime rides, everyone’s faces are just glowing from the laptops.

T: I just listened to your guys’ new album and your cellist Alexandra Lawn sings on “You and I Know.” Are there are any other band members with undiscovered singing talents?

B: <pointing> Mat, this one.

M: I did sing one of the songs—

B: Massachusetts.

M: —the song Massachusetts, I sang. Well Wes [Miles, Ra Ra Riot’s singer] and I both sing it. It’s like a bunch of vocal tracks, it’s both of us. But yeah, I get to sing that song.

B: Mat’s doing a lot of the harmonies on stage now.

M: I didn’t do any singing at all for the first record or anything but… I think, you can just do a lot more with three-part harmonies so I’ve been trying to—

B: Help flesh them out.

M: Yeah, help. Get better at singing.

B: Sounds good.

M: Thanks! Yeah, I still got a ways to go, but yeah, it’s really fun. I mean, I love singing—I sing all the time. Like in private or like in the van or listening to music. It’s fun to actually try to start singing on stage… Trying to get Becca to sing to, and Milo [Bonacci, on guitar] has a beautiful, smooth baritone.

B: <laughing> We assume that he does.

M: We’ve never actually heard Milo sing before—I’ve known him for like five years—but we assume he has—

B: A really nice bass-ey voice.

M: —yeah, maybe on the next album we’ll have some barbershop quartet stuff.

T: Looking forward to it.

M: We’ll see.

T: So I’ve watched the new video for “Boy”… but can you explain what’s the deal with the cat?

B: I don’t think there’s like a deal with the cat…

M: Yeah, we got the treatment from the director.

B: It’s more the director’s vision that ours.

M: The treatment was great. The first page said “Nighttime,” and we were like, “okay, seems cool.” And the second page says, “A cat arrives,” so we’re like, “okay, where is this going?” Then the next page says, “Dozens of cats arrive,” so we were like “okay, we’ll do it.”

B: Sold, done.

T: Have you ever thought of touring with the cat? He’s pretty cute.

B: Ehh I’m not really a cat girl, more of a dog person…

M: Yeah, they were difficult to work with, frankly. It was a bit of a diva.

B: They were trained cats but they weren’t really trained.

M: Yeah, just a prima donna. On his own schedule. They actually ruined one of the things we were supposed to have in the video. It was this big, backlit aquarium with all these fish in it, but the cat scenes took so long to shoot we had to cut that scene.

B: Yeah, what a bummer.

T: You guys were all students at Syracuse University. So what was it that made you guys decide to go into music rather than, you know, finance?

B: Well I went to school for music, so it was sort of just the natural next step.

M: Yeah, the girls, you and Allie, both studied music, but like the rest of us—Milo was in architecture, Wes was in physics, I was in art. Personally, I went to art school hoping to meet musicians in cool bands, so that was kind of always my plan, and I was happy to find a band that I liked being in so I got to drop out of school, take a tour…. But when the band started it was just sort of a fun thing to do at school and no one really expected it to turn into a career.

Ra Ra Riot- Massachusetts (download)

Ra Ra Riot- A Manner to Act (download)