June 4, 2010

Album review: Ratatat - 'LP4' (XL)

Sticking to the same formula can make you pretty good at it

7 / 10 The fact that Ratatat’s ‘LP3’ has been followed in turn by ‘LP4’ gives away their guiding principle: ‘Make the same album. Make it better.’ There are no ‘feat. Gucci Mane’ rebrandings here. In one sense ‘LP4’ is interchangeable with the rest of their output: tasteful, downbeat, wordless world music-flecked indietronica that hasn’t fallen too far from the Gore-Tex-clad backpacker hip-hop family tree of DJ Shadow. But by the same token, the Brooklyn duo have kept on sharpening their focus. The hooks have gotten naggier, the production crisper, to the point where ‘LP4’’s wide-eyed squelchy funk is carving them an oxymoronic niche: ‘utterly compelling background music’.

Gavin Haynes

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