Ratatat

“We were on YouTube. You know, just surfing for, like, hours,” explains multi-instrumentalist and producer Stroud. “A lot of the music on that show is gross. It’s really schmaltzy. But we discovered a video of this great lap steel guitar player, Alvino Rey. It’s absolutely insane. He gets his guitar to sound like it’s singing – as in, it sounds like an actual human voice. It’s so bizarre and amazing.”

This sparked something of an obsession for the pair. They ordered lap steel guitars (a kind of horizontal guitar on legs) online to replicate the otherworldly sound.

“We did loads of research, got super nerdy about it,” says Stroud. “We bought the same guitars they were using. It’s old-sounding and futuristic-sounding at the same time. It’s always fun to have a new sound to work with. You end up writing different kinds of songs.”

The results are certainly a departure from the crunchy electro baroque style found on Ratatat’s previous releases, the last of which, LP4, came out in 2010. Their latest album, Magnifique, is littered with blissed-out Hawaiian sounds.

“We try to do almost the opposite of whatever we just did,” says Stroud. “We get bored pretty easily. We’re trying to keep ourselves entertained. I’m curious about the reaction. We might alienate some people, but… I don’t really care!”

Magnifique (the title is tongue-in-cheek – “the same joke of calling our old album Classics,” explains Stroud) has been some five years in the making. After nearly a decade of relentless touring and recording, the Brooklyn-based duo needed a break.

“We were a little bit burnt out,” Stroud explains. “It had been non-stop. I felt we kept making the same song over and over, so it’s good to take a step back for a minute and come back to it with something new.”

Writing and recording were done in spurts in various studios around New York and in a friend’s house in Jamaica, overlooking the ocean. Stroud and Mast took great pains over every sound heard on the album, sourcing antique amplifiers from Mexican thrift stores and researching Queen guitarist Brian May’s set-up to emulate his guitar tone. “It’s a totally obsessive task,” says Stroud. “It’s pretty nerdy. We got really involved in that.”

The tracks are all guitar-led, but vary in style from the languid and laid-back to thumping club bangers with some gritty indie electro thrown in for good measure.

“We wanted to bring the focus back to guitars. We definitely wanted the album to have really strong melodies this time. Sometimes when starting with a beat you rely on it too much. It becomes more about production than actually songwriting. The songs are more memorable. It’s our best album so far.”

Ratatat are touring the new material and hope to visit Australia before the end of the year.

“I got to practise,” says Stroud. “The lap steel still feels really weird to me. It’s hard! Those old players in those clips – you ever notice they look like psychos? Really dorky, a bit creepy. I got to start working on that look!”