“This is our last song,” the instrumental group Ratatat’s guitarist Evan Mast repeatedly said before more than half of the songs they played at the Black Cat on Wednesday night. At the time, it threw me off, but when thinking about it later, I realize it makes a lot of sense. Ratatat’s music, each and every song, is most definitely the last song of a video game. You know the song I’m referring to — the song that plays after you save the princess, have just conquered the last monster, have just finished the game after a month of playing non-stop and no one else seems to care type of music. It has nerdy beeps and blips that sound like a computer geek’s wet dream, a catchy beat and an oddly triumphant, yet understated, melody.

With much of their fuzzed out, harmonizing guitars backed by retro-sounding hip-hop beats, Ratatat’s sound can be considered an indie-electro-funk fusion of sorts. They tore into their repertoire with gusto as Lichtenstein-esque abstractions were projected on the screen behind them. The set intermixed some of the more anthemic songs – “El Pico” and “Seventeen Years” for instance – off of their first album Ratatat, with their more mellow numbers that characterized the recently released Classics. Much of Ratatat’s music had a similar M.O. — the songs open with a catchy beat and happy-go-lucky guitar or keyboard-based melody, then they begin to loop and layer those melodies, harmonize and jam out on their instruments until the beat forces its way back into the foreground and the song ends. Most of their songs ebb and flow subtlety — an affect that often left me wanting more of a climax. Occasionally they add kitschy noises (like the panther roar on “Wildcat”) into the mix that give one the sense of release — and the audience a chance to cheer. This is the type of atmospheric music you can legitimately lose yourself in — and I found myself doing just that throughout the show.

Photo by Kyle Gustafson