We have a pair of tickets for one lucky winner and a friend to join Ra Ra Riot this Wednesday, January 23, at a sold-out 9:30 Club to celebrate the release of their third album Beta Love, which hits shelves the day prior via Barsuk.
The new album is streaming in its entirety this week only on the band’s Youtube channel, and the first single and title track “Beta Love” is available as a free download.
After the band’s inception in Syracuse, New York in 2006, Ra Ra Riot quickly gained momentum and signed with Barsuk only two years later, in 2008. That same year, their debut full-length The Rhumb Line featured the poppy, romantic singles “Dying Is Fine” and “Can You Tell Me.” This was followed by 2010’s The Orchard, which was nominated for an Independent Music Award.
Beta Love is the band’s first album as a four-piece, with the recent departure of cellist Alexandra Lawn. Produced by Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello, Wavves) and recorded at Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, Mississippi, Ra Ra Riot’s website mentions that the creativity found in the new album was inspired by the Southern air and “informed by the works of cyperpunk novelist William Gibson and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s musings on the technological singularity and transhumanism.”
This is not the first time they’ve had a literary bent, as “Dying Is Fine” was inspired by the poem “dying is fine)but Death” by e.e. cummings. For a chance to win tickets to the show, tell us your favorite author. Bonus points for an author whose work has inspired a song or album.
I like to think of “Ramble On” as The Hobbit Song. I wonder what J.R.R. Tolkien thought of Led Zeppelin?
