Minimalist Danish duo maintains its irresistibly twisted ways
Has the element of danger once so vital to rock ’n roll’s beating heart become something of a quaint cliche?
Elvis’ ascendency was pure, forbidden, hip-shake sex. The Stones—especially when compared to their scrubbed-up moptop contemporaries from Liverpool—felt vaguely threatening and dirty to a suitably appalled Middle England. Guns N’ Roses made a virtue of the squalor from which they crawled. Hell, the entire punk ethos—even Nirvana’s version, located more than a decade after the initial threat was detected and snuffed out—was essentially
born in a cesspool. Embedded somewhere in our deepest subconscious lies the equation “menace + mindless indulgence/noise = rawk.” So how best to convey the essential qualities of this algorithm in a medium that has been there, done that?
Three albums deep in their latterday foray into this well-trodden world
of lasciviousness and licentiousness,
The Raveonettes can now be added to
this list. The Danish duo—Sune Rose
Wagner and his aluminum (haired) foil,
Sharin Foo—aren’t exactly today’s Pete
Doherty or Amy Winehouse, consuming
their way into rehab and/or jail cells
and then letting their art tell the same
ol’ tawdry tale. But the sonically
implied sordidness associated with
their music is hard to miss, and the
group’s latest release, Lust Lust Lust,
rubs their short list of musical tricks
(creepy guy/girl unison vocals, a flood
of reverb spilling over Phil Spector’s
Wall of Sound, lyrics that leave more
to your filthy little imagination than
they typically spell out) together like
dry sticks and makes fire in the
process.
On 2005’s Pretty in Black, The
Raveonettes spent an entire record
attempting to break out of their selfimposed
Jesus and Mary Chain/Velvet
Underground minimalist penalty box
with only occasionally effective results,
drafting the Velvets’ Mo Tucker and
Suicide’s Martin Rev for percussive
cameos but never managing to push
past the “this album is all songs in the
key of B-flat minor” purism that characterized
their earliest work. Indeed,
the constraints the band imposed on
itself early in its career created an
almost inevitable critical backlash—
comments such as “holy shit, I think
my gimmick lobe just ruptured” were
typical of a certain reaction to their
single-minded mashup of Motown girlgroup
affinities and JAMC wall-offeedback
solos.
Now signed to a new label, Vice
(which includes young-turk stablemates
such as Justice, Chromeo, Black Lips
and Bloc Party), The Raveonettes are
once again back to making the most of
just enough. The album’s lead track,
“Aly, Walk With Me,” sounds like the
soundtrack to a lost Quentin Tarantino
noir-scape, flaunting a slinky urban
beat and an ear-damaging feedback
solo worthy of the Mary Chain’s Reid
brothers while essaying wasted days
and wasted nights in soul-corrupting
American burgs such as Portland, Ore.,
and New York City. “You Want the
Candy” is the pair’s updated take on
the Mary Chain’s “Some Candy
Talking” (but The Raveonettes’ “dirty
treats” are all about molten sex vs. a
spoonful of liquid sin), while tracks
such as “Lust” (“I fell out of heaven to
be with you in hell / My sin’s not quite
‘Seven,’ nothing much to tell”) and
“With My Eyes Closed” (“I close my
eyes to urge you to leave here … it was
never meant to be familiar”) mark the
duo as the new Mazzy Star: chilly,
emotionally distant and beautifully
unavailable. Like David
Roback before him, Wagner
is bent on seducing the ears
with that uniquely Paisley
Underground concoction—
drowsy, drifting vocals marked
with a post-modern ennui,
insanely echoed surf-guitars
that chime as often as they
shred, and a darkly dazzling
Doors-meet-the-Velvets vibe
that teeters perilously
between shamanistic obsession
and drug-induced trance.
“Hallucinations” sums up the
entirety of The Raveonettes’ value
proposition: the notion that there is
beauty in simplicity, depth in density.
The drum part consists of a sparsely
played snare line, while the guitars are
either fuzzy down below (where the
chords are) or piercing up above (where
the solo lines reside)—a sweet/sour combination
that creates just enough tension
to maintain interest over the course
of the song’s three-minute run time.
The vocals are so hazy there’s almost a
soporific quality about them. Pitting
garage-rock tactics against Motown
strategy, Lust Lust Lust is my kinda vice.