The story goes something like this.
Sometime back in 2002, famed Rolling Stone rock critic David Fricke hopped a flight from New York to Denmark to scope out the Scandinavian scene at the annual SPOT Music Festival in the city of Aarhus. Anticipating Fricke’s arrival, the Danish duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo quickly cobbled their band together, whipped up a short set of songs, renamed themselves as the Raveonettes and then hit the stage at the SPOT hoping the journalist could score the stateside credibility needed to springboard them into super-stardom.
Everything went as planned, sort of. Fricke praised the band in print and lauded Wagner and Foo as the next wave of modern rock. Columbia Records jumped on board and handed down a million dollar record deal. They released a buzz-worthy EP and the publicity machine kicked into high gear, but the springboard never really came, let alone the super-stardom.
Instead, the Raveonettes were eventually forced to settle into their status as another hardworking indie cult band, releasing five albums in nine years, each one sporting their signifying sound collage of 50’s rock kitsch, Spector-esque girl group harmonies, and Jesus & Mary Chain squall. Their latest effort, Raven In The Grave, continues along the same spectrum, except this time the duo seems to have traded in the summery surfed-out chic of their earlier releases for a darker, denser, almost goth-like melancholia. Simmering synths have replaced guitar twang as the common discourse, and Wagner’s bloodless deadpan delivery stands out a bit more this time around than Foo’s honey-sweet coo, which carried their 2003 full-length debut Chain Gang Of Love.
The knock on the Raveonettes has always been that their albums, not to mention songs, all sound more or less the same. Despite the new direction displayed here, this well-known knock isn’t without warrant. Opener “Recharge & Revolt”, with its tom-tom-snare intro and sonic screech of distortion, carries a definite familiarity, while the upbeat bounce of later track “Ignite” could easily fit in as an updated outtake from any one of their previous studio sessions.
That being said, most die hard Raveonettes fans, or even casual listeners willing to dig a bit deeper, know that there has been a steady variation in approach throughout their discography, specifically since they escaped the major label pressure of Columbia for the independent freedom of Vice Records. 2007’s Lust, Lust, Lust blanketed a beachy vibe with a narcotic haze of unrepentant volume, and 2009’s In & Out Of Control employed a Gossip Girl-worthy pop appeal never before attempted.
With Raven In The Grave, the Danes have this time turned the corner into new wave gloom, covering each song, and more so the album as a whole, with an aching air of dread and despair. Combining a creepy tunnel-of-light keyboard twinkle with Foo’s vocal fear of being locked out at the pearly gates, “War In Heaven” comes across like the audio equivalent of an overdosing junkie’s final lament. Even as the most solid track on the album, “Apparitions” sounds like a vampire sucked what little color was left out of a Disintegration-era Robert Smith, and then propped him up to perform in front of a garden of ghosts. The spookiness doesn’t cease there, as “Evil Seeds” is an industrial influenced life-after-I’m-gone reflection, and closer “My Time’s Up” plays out like a twisted funeral dirge, with Wagner and Foo both softly whispering what seems to be at the core of the album: “My time’s up/And I don’t care.”
Yet somehow time never seems to be up for the Raveonettes, no matter which subtle shift in sensibility they undertake. They may have never reached the unparalleled height of popularity that Fricke and Columbia envisioned, yet even Wagner and Foo themselves would probably tell you that that didn’t come as much of a surprise. Whereas their early black-clad biker meets dystopian David Lynch imagery fit the hype perfectly, their sound was just too abrasive and their style too niche to ever truly cross over. Regardless, the duo continued to create, evolve and more importantly produce at an impressive pace. So if there is anything that the dim tone of the new record indicates, it’s that while the raven may indeed be in the grave, the Raveonettes are still soaring high above it.
Beau De Lang
