Rave Ami
Let It Be
November 19, 2021
PHOTO CREDIT: Shauna Miller
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ALBUM COVER
Rave Ami were a live band. For ten years, the Pittsburgh trio who formed as high-schoolers were a secret handshake among touring acts and locals alike who knew that every show they played was a shoe-in. Everyone in the room was guaranteed to walk out the door a fan. But Rave Ami aren’t a live band anymore. Live bands don’t make albums as good as Let It Be.
After releasing their 2017 debut, Mock Pop, and then busting out their charmingly haphazard 2018 follow-up, All Great Bands Break Up, guitarist/vocalist Joe Praksti, bassist Pat O’Toole, and drummer/vocalist Evan Meindl were ready for their third act. They’d done the whole preternaturally-gifted-musicians-drinking-hard-and-playing-shockingly-well-yet-endearingly-sloppy thing for a decade, and they were ready to make something that lasted longer than a few days of ringing ears.
For Let It Be, they wrote songs — beautiful, majestic, heartfelt, clever, emotionally evocative songs with enduring melodies and titillating arrangements; throttling guitar solos and soft, delicate strumming. Songs that alternate between the effortlessly arranged colors and sequences of ‘60s mod and the proud delinquency of the only mic cable in the whole venue — the one that’s so gnawed up by rats that it shocks you every time you take a breath. Let It Be revels in the dichotomies of a band with creative A.D.D. who’ve decided to rail their prescribed pills instead of popping one with water every six hours.
Let It Be’s opening track is ”Nausea Ad Nauseum,” a yearning, classically perfect pop song replete with cellos, violins, trumpets, guest vocalists and the type of serious studio consideration people go into debt to acquire. The next song, “Secrets of the Universe,” sounds the way it feels to be drunk in the back seat while the night’s still young. A rubber-burning psych-rock banger with a motorik groove that takes off just the way the gods of cheap booze and cheaper cigarettes intended. ”I can’t control myself, when you’re around,” Pratski warbles with a panicked rasp that sounds like he’s making that admission by the time his hands are already where they shouldn’t be.
”Saints On Silver” is skittering, anxious, and would be punk if the drumming wasn’t so furious and technical and the svelte harmonies weren’t so brilliant. It’s mathy, but in the way servers do quick tip calculations. None of that AP algebra shit. “Graduation Day” features trumpets that celebratorily sound off behind Praksti’s deflated groan, evoking the dead-eyed sense of accomplishment that comes from graduating with a hangover. Here, and many other places on the record, the frontman’s voice has a distinctly English flair — but in the way Alex Chilton sounded English even though he was a good ole boy. Praksti’s is an Iron City cockney, and it’s fucking melty.
There are two sides to Rave Ami on Let It Be but they don’t mirror one another. Side B only offers more variety and more craftsmanship than the one before it. There’s a found-footage ambient interlude and a pillowy tune called “Light Switch” that dreams of dream-pop while residing in our earthly realm of rock. “The Hexer” boasts space-age, Ty Segall-esque harmonies while “Mighty Maltz Waltz'' contains lilting reverb, tickling drum stick clicks, and the kind of weasley basslines that frequent jazz clubs on the weekends and bus tables on Tuesday nights. Rave Ami aren’t snobs but they know their way around the last 60 years of rock better than the average emo kid’s average boomer parent. It shows on Let It Be. It also tells.
“(Tell Me When You) Find It” begins with male-female harmonies between Praksti and Sarah Mary Ellis that sound like Sonny and Cher by way of Robert Pollard. Utter beauty ensues, and it fades out while Praksti recites a poem about the night blurring into morning and all things finding their place. ”Let it be” are his final words. The Beatles released that album after they broke up and Praksti sings the line with a swan-song conclusiveness. Thankfully, Rave Ami are just getting started.
Rave Ami On Tour
For more information, please contact:
Eric Bennett
eric@luckybirdmedia.com