Ratatat, Oct. 1, Starlight Ballroom

POSTED: Friday, October 3, 2008, 7:40 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

Photo | Drew Lazor

Ratatat — Brooklyn-based duo Mike Stroud and Evan Mast — creates catchy-as-fuck Generation Pro Tools jams that kids like to dance to. It's the type of stuff that helps sauced party poopers get off the couch to mug and bop. The type of stuff that makes you wish you were actually good at The Robot. The type of stuff that inexplicably catches rhythm with your turn signal when you're stuck in traffic.

Ratatat is F-U-N fun. Then why does it seem like they're not having any live?

After a quick, loud and dirty-dirty set from Cobra Commander-masked DJ E*Rock (Mast's brother) and a bit of crunchy, energetic reverb from Panther, Stroud and Mast materialized onstage, sleek Ratatat logo blinking and popping behind them, greeting the audience with something to the effect of "hi." (They would end with an equally emphatic "thanks, bye.")

The set list, which leaned heavily on the duo's Afro-Cuban-laden, light-on-guitar latest, LP3, came out as cut and dry as a term paper outline, not a single lick of extension or experimentation dressing the thing. They blasted out utterly flawless, exact-replica recreations of album tracks ("Wildcat," "Mumtaz Khan," "17 Years," "Mirando," "Falcon Jab") back to back to back, never daring to take a peek into the improv box or dive into an onstage recreation of one of their many excellent remixes.

The shoulder-swaying, single-finger-raising crowd crammed between the Starlight's awkwardly positioned roller rink columns did not care — too busy screaming and bumping into each other. And there is nothing wrong with that, because fun is fun. But it was hard to ignore the fact that, with the exception of a few moments, Stroud and Mast acted nonplussed to the point of indifference. True, they are on the last leg of their U.S. tour before shipping off to Europe in November. And perhaps the pair, who come off as modest, normal dudes, feel more comfortable in the studio bouncing ideas off each other than communicating with a shitload of sweaty kids in scarves. Excuses aside, this seemed more like a master's recital than a show.

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