Ratatat Raw

If Brooklyn had a wrestling team competing in what was formerly known as WWF's "Monday Night Raw" (now WWE's "Raw," which doesn't sound as cool), [Ratatat] would provide its entry music. This electronic-melodic, instrumental duo has an epic sound that resonated throughout [Webster Hall](www.websterhall.com) last night. Only a trio of musicians—Mike Stroud, Evan Mast and an additional keyboardist—set up shop onstage during the performance, but the songs that emerged had this heroic, larger-than-life appeal. Tunes from Classics dominated the set, and the sold out crowd acted as if its collective mind were actually being blown each time Stroud and Mast kicked into a new beat.

Stroud hunched over his guitar all night, looking like he'd just crawled out of a cave; his shaggy mop of shoulder-length, dark hair flipped in front of his face and shrouded what his beard didn't already cover. Mast, the taller, cleaner cut and more parent-friendly of the two, politely addressed the crowd as "nice people" and provide the crafty bass lines over which Stroud's melodies slid. A salute to whoever conducted the lights: When Stroud got on his knees in a cloud of smoke, launched into a grand gesture of a guitar strum and that huge flash of white light exploded behind him, it was [SpinalTap]-magnificence in the best of ways. So perhaps when an updated version of the famous 1980s WWF tagteam [The Bushwackers](http://www.wrestlingclassics.com/bushwhackers/) emerges from Brooklyn, the team can borrow not just the Ratatat music, but also the smoke machine and the lighting master.