Concert Review: Ra Ra Riot

Evil Twin #2 and I went to see Ra Ra Riot at Webster Hall on Saturday April 4th. The show was great. For those who aren't paying attention, Ra Ra Riot is a Syracuse birthed rock band who supplement the traditional guitar, bass, drummer band components with a cellist and a violinist. This addition and the speed at which they play make for a pretty rocking experience overall. It's quite a site to behold, watching this two woman string section rip. I was captivated and not alone. At one point ET #2 remarked "Wow, the violinist's bow is disintegrating"

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You learn things at concerts that are not intuitively obvious. The tickets were for "18 and over" so I assumed the fan base would be the Gossip Girl set. Yes, there was some of that but not as much as you might think. In fact, near as I could tell ET #2 and I were surrounded by lesbians. I knew this for a number of reasons. One, there was a lot of girl on girl possessive touching. Two, I was standing next to a woman who looked like she had just won a Morrisey look-a-like contest in 1989. She had a better pompadour than I could ever pray for, and I hated her for it. It was like my very own live version of "The L Word".

Edging into this crowd was a small but noticeable set of far too excited frat boys. They bounded liberally along to "Too too too fast", and what I could only describe as a fierce cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love". Brilliant. We hypothesized they were Syracuse grads. That could be true, regardless they were serious fan. This was all not without its tension. One frat boy exuberance caused him to repeatedly bump into a nerd hot lesbian in square rim glasses. Inaudible over the music, I could see her mouth "I will slap you" to frat boy more than once.

We were left to ask ourselves, what are all these people doing here? One Answer: Alexandra Lawn. Even it was not planned this is what they found themselves doing. No doubt about it.

For a little over an hour, this woman ripped through songs on her cello; stomping, preening, sweating and singing to a very tight set. At several points, she was a woman possessed half playing, half humping her cello. ET #2 noticed a woman in front of us who snapped what could only be 100 photos of her on her camera. It got to the point where everyone was just looking at her. ET #2 admitted she felt bad for the violinist. I assured her that there were different strokes for different folks. While Ms. Lawn was essentially sex and a cello, some out here were turned on by the hipster dream that the violinist represented, an attainably hot virtuotastic force, ironically dressed in a white and black poka dot skirt.

Of course, I never bothered to look up her name. I did, however, bother to spend 30 minutes looking through flickr fan photos of past Ra Ra Riot gigs to find the a few choice close up photos of Ms. Lawn. There were a lot to chose from.

Here's a full set they did at NoisePop in SF last month. Professional quality concert video, worth watching