So, at Art Brut last night, I spent the better part of one of their songs torturing myself trying to figure out why a riff they kept playing sounded so maddeningly familiar. I finally realized that it was basically pulled note-for-note from the Bangles’ cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter”. My gin tonic decided that this practice should be called “riffting,” and bands that practice it “riffters.” (That is, a portmanteau of “riff” and “lifting,” with a convenient evocation of “grifter” to boot.) Spencer prefers “bricoleurs,” which has a nice ring to it, but is less intuitive if you don’t know what “bricolage” is, whereas I think anyone would grok the meaning of “riffting” immediately.