-- by Kurt Loder
Good news: The Raveonettes will soon walk among us. The Danish group will launch a two-month U.S. tour on February 26, and its eight-track debut EP, Whip It On, will get a major-label release on March 25. (It's already available here on an indie label called The Orchard.) The band recently finished mastering its debut album, Chain Gang of Love, and that should be out in late spring or early summer. We caught a small-club Raveonettes show in December, and filed this review. ...
NEW YORK — The Raveonettes, a fairly fabulous new Danish band that's currently the object of much music-biz buzz, played a brief showcase set at New York's Mercury Lounge back in December, for a roomful of A&R and promo guys from Columbia Records, which recently signed the group.
The four-piece band opened in its usual fashion, with a barrage of undifferentiated guitar noise, over which the core duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo delicately harmonized the old Buddy Holly hit "Everyday." Nobody'd ever heard anything quite like this — and biz vets like these have heard just about everything, believe me. By the time the band started whomping out its own material, the hype-hardened crowd was all but dancing in place. That's how good the Raveonettes are.
OK, label staffers are paid to demonstrate enthusiasm for newly signed acts. But a much broader, nationwide excitement about this distinctive group seems very likely. Its richly melodic songs and relentless, punk-beat rhythms demonstrate a deep connection to rock and roll in all its forms, from Everly Brothers harmonies and rockabilly propulsion to surf-guitar flourishes and grand echoes of the old Phil Spector "wall of sound." Layered with the aforementioned squalling guitar noise, the result of all this stylistic interplay is completely here-and-now.
Guitarist Wagner, who writes the songs and brings the noise, has in the past spent considerable time living in New York and Los Angeles, where he failed to find players who shared his unique musical vision. There are no monster riffs in his songs, and there's very little room for guitar solos. In addition, each batch of his tunes is written in the same strange key (B-flat minor on the EP, glorious B-flat major on the upcoming Raveonettes album).
Returning to Copenhagen, Wagner hooked up with Sharin Foo, whose honeyed voice melded perfectly with his more assertive leads. (Foo, a Scandinavian blonde in the classic, sent-from-heaven mold, is part Chinese; her grandfather opened Denmark's first Chinese restaurant.) Although she was strictly a singer, not an instrumentalist, Sharin was encouraged by Wagner to take up the bass. His songs, he explained, were built on simple chord progressions; she could probably master them pretty easily. And she did.
Wagner and Foo laid down the eight tracks that would become the Whip It On EP in his bedroom, on a computer equipped with a Pro Tools recording program. As you can now hear, each song is in the two- to three-minute range, and each one sounds like a classic, driving-around radio hit. You must check this out for yourself.
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