With a home base of Brooklyn, a logo that looks like it was designed by Jem and the Holograms and professional connections to Ben Kweller and Interpol, these guys are probably hipster darlings. That's a shame, because there's a delicate self-consciousness to "LP3" that would be impossible to notice when lumped in with the kind of gaudy sleaze-disco you'd hear while thumbing through racks of lamé tube tops at American Apparel.
It wasn't too long ago, though, that Ratatat was putting out electronica full of sass and pervy guitar wails songs like "Wildcat," "Seventeen Years" and "Lex," which found themselves right at home in numerous commercials and on the catwalks of Chanel and Louis Vuitton. This was the sound that won the band its current fans, and for that reason "LP3" may be something of a disappointment to those hoping for lots of molten synths and bravado.
This is anything but a condemnation of the band's brand-new album, however.
The sound of this album has much in common with a social subset Radar magazine has dubbed the "Tweemo," a Nico-listening, ballet flat-wearing sort who are "more likely to bring back the tandem bicycle than to 'fuck da police!' " Drifting somewhere between innocent and blasé, LP3 seems like just the thing for a Tweemo in search of tunes. Little doodles of sound, like the bubbly organ on "Bird-Priest," keep the album from sounding too hip, too remote, too cool for the chic-yet-awkward among us. It's a refreshingly accessible sound that should appeal equally to Optimist Club devotees and Max Fischer wannabes. (When you get right down to it, is there really much of a difference anyway?)