 Media Credit: Soren Solkaer Starbird Foo and Wagner preserve the legacy and chic of the throwback rock and rol duo.
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Hailing from Copenhagen, The Raveonettes may be joining Legoland as another of Denmark's great contributions to the entertainment industry. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo met through mutual friends, and having originally worked independently on the capital city's music scene, they decided to team up for an international ride of the retro indie rock wave. Vocalist and guitarist Foo unabashedly acknowledges that despite the mountains of indie bands knocking about, standing out from the crowd and sounding completely different is not a priority.
"We're not trying to reinvent music or be super innovative," she said of The Raveonettes' style and the sort of songs they choose to commit to record. "We have a lot of material, and what we select from that is intuitive and emotional. Rather than trying to intellectualize it or figure it out, it's about what we respond to and whether that's the sound we want."
The band is highly influenced in sound and style by the glamour of the 50s and 60s. On their second full-length album, Pretty in Black, vocalist and guitarist Wagner wrote and sung "Heavens" in the style of Elvis, and covered "My Boyfriend's Back," a track written by their co-producer Richard Gottehrer and originally sung by The Angels in 1963. On their newest album, Lust Lust Lust, the band continues to be forthright about where they get their ideas.
"We embrace the fact that we get a lot of inspiration from our knowledge and love of music; it's not like we're trying to hide it from the world," Foo said. But despite such heavy influences from past decades, The Raveonettes don't see themselves as purely retro.
"We get a lot of influences from the basic song writing of someone like Buddy Holly with three chords and good melodies, but we add things like distortion and dissonance which are definitely not a part of that era," Foo explained.
Certainly, on Lust Lust Lust the band makes the most of more modern sounds and techniques such as loops and hip hop beats in tracks like the sinister opener, "Aly Walk With Me." The group's austere style of song-writing originates in the simplicity of their initial albums. Their first full length release, Chain Gang of Love, was written entirely in B-flat major, only a semitone's divergence from their 2002 EP Whip It On which was written entirely in B-flat minor. Lust Lust Lust can be seen as a return to the band's melancholic yet unassuming roots. Released in February, The Raveonettes' newest creation is described by Foo as, "our darkest album to date."
"It's more atmospheric, more intimate, more personal, yet very minimal and cut to the bone," she added, comparing Lust Lust Lust with previous releases.
The result is a bizarre musical hybrid of a contemporarized The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Ronettes from the 60s. The Ronettes are the successful pop threesome from whom The Raveonettes derived their name, and the band has already collaborated with one third of the trio on the album Pretty in Black, where Ronnie Spector sings on "Ode to L.A." Despite the dominance of melancholy in most of the Raveonettes' material, tracks like "Dead Sound" and "I Want Candy" from Lust Lust Lust are upbeat and made sweet by electro effects and the pair's boy-girl harmonies.
As the only two permanent members of the band, the benefit of variation necessitates Wagner and Foo be joined on tour by a changing number of other musicians. On their current North American tour the pair are joined by only one other musician, a drummer, and a series of electronic recordings. The minimal stage cluster will compliment the raw sound of the new album and make for a more intimate and personal performance. Such a set up displays the nuances of a band who on the surface may seem indistinctive, but benefit from second listening and an appreciation of the stylistic subtleties shaped by their countless influences.
The Ravonettes play Les Saintes (30 Ste-Catherine W.) on March 22. Tickets are $16.50 from admission.com.
2008 Woodie Awards
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