The Rhumb Line

• Track Listing

Indie-rock with strings. That is Ra Ra Riot’s formula and it makes for some quite lovely and moving chamber pop. Nix that. It is something more akin to chamber rock. Cellist Alexandra Lawn and violinist Rebecca Zeller dress these dramatic, mostly upbeat drum driven songs elegantly, drawing the listener into tunes drawn from literary references (Harper Lee and E.E. Cummings both play roles here), loss (the band’s original drummer had passed away in 2007) and Kate Bush (track 9 is a cover of "Suspended in Gaffa"). Barsuk.