Nordic Warriors
the raveonettes invade and conquer
Flashback to 2002: A fleet of meticulously coiffed, ’60s-inspired, often-uniformed musicians hailing from wintry Scandinavian lands invaded the United States, topped our musical charts, graced the covers of our magazines, and prompted our critics to wonder if the future of rock music lay a little east of New York.
Present Day: Most members of the Scandinavian wave have failed to deliver. As popular interest wanes, the gimmick wore off, and most bands lacked staying power. Sophomore efforts failed to take off and press coverage dwindled to little more than brief blurbs. Almost alone among these Nordic conquerors, those who still stand as bastions of musical success are two Danes: the wiry Sune Rose Wagner and the blisteringly blonde Sharin Foo, both of the Raveonettes.
Currently touring in support of their third full-length release, Lust Lust Lust, the Raveonettes have outlasted many of the bands that conquered the charts six years ago. After forming in 2001, they recorded their first studio album Whip It On and performed at Denmark’s SPOT festival. In the audience was Rolling Stone editor David Fricke, who was so impressed with the duo he set off a major label bidding war. Their full-length debut, Chain Gang of Love, was released in 2003 to strong reviews that celebrated their grimy, melodic sound, strongly inspired by 1960s pop acts. They polished their production for Pretty in Black, which featured guest appearances from Maureen Tucker of The Velvet Underground and Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes. The Ronettes, the iconic girl group, along with Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” inspired the duo’s name. Lust Lust Lust features a return to their signature grit and noise, with an added dose of distortion that critics have likened to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy.
“This album is minimal and darker,” Foo says. “There’s space in the music. It’s atmospheric.” But their classic pop affection still stands. “It’s still the same music that we love, but we don’t like to repeat ourselves. You change where you are at the moment, but our influences haven’t changed,” she says.
While The Raveonettes have never shied away from themes of sex and drugs, Lust Lust Lust truly brings this focus to the forefront. For example, the video for the single “You Want the Candy” features both go-go dancers and allusions to some white powders that aren’t sugar. “It’s about primitive urges,” Foo says, reluctant to comment on the album’s bold title and therefore sway the listener’s experience. To her, lust refers to “a debate about how you find a balance” of “the choice you make in relation to people and yourself.” Lyrically, the album plunges the depths of self-indulgence without ever losing sight of the ultimate emptiness of excess. Perhaps it is this maturation that has earned The Raveonettes staying power.
Despite what their racy lyrics might suggest, Wagner and Foo are anything but decadent rock stars. Their life on tour sounds positively pleasant. “It’s fun to come back because we get to know the cities,” Foo says of getting back on tour. “We get to revisit place we’ve been before. We get to go back to the bookstores and vintage stores and restaurants we like.”
Wagner, who writes the songs and does much of the production, has said that he regularly rises at the decidedly undebauched hour of 7 a.m. and promptly composes three or four songs. He reportedly amassed well over one hundred candidates for this album alone. While writing, Wagner typically imposes some restraint on himself—Chain Gang of Love featured songs exclusively in the key of B flat major, while their current release features carefully restrained percussion, and songs rarely last longer than the three-minute mark. One of Lust Lust Lust’s standout tracks, “Aly Walk With Me,” is about a girl Wagner met on MySpace, with whom he developed a meaningful, platonic relationship confined to the Internet—hardly typical rockstar behavior.
Lust Lust Lust also marks the band’s transition from Columbia Records to Vice Records. Though Foo insists Columbia provided a good working relationship, Wagner has criticized them in the past for failing to support Pretty in Black and releasing only one single from the album. When their contract with Columbia expired, the duo sought an independent label that suited their less-than-mainstream sound. “We are a pretty alternative band,” Foo says, “and when it comes down to it, at a lot of major labels there is not a lot of room for alternative bands that aren’t commercial.”
Accordingly, their tour made a stop in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest, the annual convention of “pretty alternative bands.” The Raveonettes played twelve grueling showcases, including one, more unusual event: a party hosted by the Food Network’s Rachael Ray, alongside Holy Fuck, The Stills, and Ray’s husband’s band, The Cringe. In response to the predictably outraged reaction from the music blog community, Ray said that she loves music and heard The Raveonettes while listening to satellite radio. With the celebrity chef unexpectedly declaring herself a fan, perhaps the band’s audience is broader than Foo expected. The Raveonettes attracted dozens of hipsters and music buffs alike to the unusual event, and by all accounts even the most capricious bloggers were swayed by their performance—and by some of Ray’s apparently delicious sammies. Post-SXSW exhaustion resulted in the cancellation of the Detroit date of their tour, but The Raveonettes are looking forward to playing Montreal and New York and are showing no signs of settling down in Denmark any time soon. \\\