Forgive Ratatat their soundtracky innocuousness. People love this band's M83-on-Wellbutrin sound for its one great gimmick-- multiple styles of music mashed together under digital anesthesia and performed with waiting room Muzak primness. They're the Urban Outfitters of recorded sound: everything chewed up, fed through a ringer, or otherwise digested, and handed down two years later to the kids as avant and edgy. Wham, bam, 4.2.
Except Ratatat complicate things by busting mad hooks. "Seventeen Years", "El Pico", and "Breaking Away" from their self-titled debut were all anthemic and new-sounding enough to hold ears through the album's filler. Those songs hinted at great heights (never reached) and profound depth (never plumbed to). Listeners probably wouldn't have been so patient if Evan Mast and Mike Stroud weren't expert programmers, indulging in pretty atmospherics that they seldom dared disturb with industrious tempos or outsize dynamics.
Classics is more varied in texture and tempo and tone than its predecessor. But aside from "Lex", a pretty obvious "Seventeen Years" rehash, and "Wildcat", which samples actual fucking panther roars, there are no curtain raisers, just a whole lot more suggestion. The album downplays the group's flair for booming ghetto blaster beats, so now we can actually hear all the styles being watered down. "Tropicana" almost pulls off "Magical Mystery Tour" psychedelia, employing jittery string plucks and marching drums to inoffensive effect. "Gettysburg"'s title promises garrisons and battlefields of clay, but the song's galloping beat and ethereal organ are less evocative.
Many tracks involve atavistic or vaguely ethnic sounds. "Montanita" flips a deconstructed tango rhythm but a lounged-out xylophone confuses things. "Swisha" aims for a roiling spaghetti Western feel, which is almost exciting. Its cinematic quality is no accident. Like the band itself, Classics sounds like it was designed to serve something-- a movie or a video game or a Power Point presentation. The biggest difference is brow height: Ratatat would've sounded great behind a game of Tetris; Classics strives to soundtrack the next Wes Anderson flick. Both albums beg for a visual component. This one just assumes applying for a more complex job is the same as actually being more complex.
