The Metamorphosis of Ra Ra Riot

Despite a Tragic Loss, The Band is Reborn

originally published March 12, 2008

There are three things you might as well know right off 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 caterpillars, 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 to tasteful children's programming than to Iron Butterfly.

The song, from the band’s melodious yet melancholy self-titled 2007 EP, was one of the first written by the group. Inspired in part by a poet forever popular on college campuses, e.e. cummings, it features the sprightly chorus, “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.

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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 foundation] 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 explore and discover. He taught himself guitar, piano and drums.” Because Pike was integral to the band’s writing, Ra Ra Riot had to learn how to compensate for his absence when the group began recording its new album at the end of last year, convening for a few weeks in Seattle 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. So, this time around, it was all [Wesley Miles], our singer, who wrote the lyrics; before, he would always work with John on lyrics, 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 has changed.”

Those people currently include Bonacci and Santos, as well as vocalist and keyboardist Miles, drummer Cameron Wisch, and the string section 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, architecture to the music industry.

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“We started playing a lot of house parties and campus events,” says Bonacci, “something to do on the weekends. There wasn’t a whole lot going on, so I think our intention was to make something go on.” They didn’t even bother recording until they wanted to play outside Syracuse and needed music to send to prospective venues. And by the fall of '06, the then-graduated members of Ra Ra Riot found themselves in a situation quite removed from their original casual jams.

“We were no longer a college band,” Bonacci says. “We started to think of ourselves as a real band in the world. Ever since then, we’re just trying to live up to that.”

Part of how the members are living up to it is through their live show. Onstage, the band is a constant flurry of activity, as the musicians pick up secondary instruments mid-song, contributing a bit of tambourine here, some keyboard there and backing vocals throughout. With Wisch on drums, the tempos are always pushing ahead, rather than lying back in the pocket, as if to further goad the band - and the crowd - to fresh exuberance. And if the lovely string section steals a bit of 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 new full-length album and finding a U.S. label to release it. But the guys have already had some pretty real-world experiences as a band, including touring the United Kingdom a couple of times, opening for The Editors and headlining some dates as well. Bonacci recalls a special gig in Reykjavík, 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, at least, projects a humble and weirdly matter-of-fact attitude. “None of us are expecting that we’re going to be doing this forever, or anything,” he says. “We all have other potential careers to get back to."

Aaron Jentzen

This article was published in the Pittsburgh City Paper in January 2008.

WHO: The Cribs, Ra Ra Riot, Jeffrey Lewis & the Jitters
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Monday, March 17, 9 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $10 advance