With Ra Ra Riot visiting our performance space just a few hours prior to opening for Vampire Weekend at BMO Pavilion, we were curious about the response we’d get from Radio Milwaukee members invited to this Studio Milwaukee Session. If they were anything like us (and they are), they likely snagged tickets to the show and thus could’ve waited to check them out that night.
Not long after sending the invitations, we got our answer. So many answers, in fact, that we quickly hit capacity for Thursday afternoon’s session and had to start turning away members.
Listening to Ra Ra Riot — either their recorded work or what they delivered live at the session — makes it clear why they were ideal support for Vampire Weekend during this swing of the latter’s tour. The two bands favor intricate compositions and lyrics that plumb the depths of all manner of topics. Then there are the fun coincidences in that both groups:
- Started at New York universities (Ra Ra Riot at Syracuse and VW at Columbia)
- Have five studio LPs
- Don’t mind waiting a bit between releases
When Ra Ra Riot put out new single “The Wish” back in May, it represented their first new music since 2019 album Superbloom. Our Carolann Grzybowski dove right into the topic during the mid-set interview, asking frontman Wes Miles about the growth — personal and professional — the band experienced in the nearly five years between projects.
“The easiest thing to mention that many people might understand is most of us, or basically all of us, had kids in the last four years. That’s something that changes your perspective on life and your own pursuits … and priorities and so forth,” Miles shared. “We still want to capture that feeling that we wanted in the beginning. The band Ra Ra Riot started just as a way to have fun and play music.
“But I think ‘The Wish’ is about that place in between happy and sad, and in between sacrifice and reward — just trying to feel all those things at the same time without it being too heavy.”
They pulled off that feat in the room and kept things wonderfully light throughout the session, both in the brightly performed music and the cheerfully (and sometimes cheekily) delivered answers to Carolann’s questions. Listen to the whole thing using the player at the top of the page, keep your ears open for “The Wish” on 88Nine and check out our membership page if you want to score an invite to all of our Studio Milwaukee Sessions.
Set list
- “Flowers”
- “The Wish”
- “Water”
