Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Rave Rave Rave
Sometimes I forget about time, I neglect the bigger picture, I take life one day at a time. I forget that I've been writing this blog for almost FOUR YEARS, that I've been in a relationship for longer than that and that it's now SEVEN YEARS since I fell in love with all those New York bands who changed my life and took my appreciation of music to new stratospheres. With the film Juno getting a whole 'nother generation of indie kids into the Moldy Peaches, I realised holy cow, this music shaped the lives of me and my friends for the summer of 2001. We discovered our own senses of irony and lo-fi and sincerity and pretension all in one year. And that's SEVEN years ago. Sheesh.
The Raveonettes are one of my favourite bands who emerged from that garage rock, throwback scene and have outlasted many of their contemporaries. Sure, they've built their band up and broken it back down to the core: Sune and Sharin. And last year they released their fourth album, Lust, Lust, Lust, with many reviewers declaring it their best album to date. A lack of airplay and buzz round its release would have you thinking that people had stopped caring about the New York/LA-based Danish duo, but their gig at 229 in London last week was a reassuringly rowdy return to the capital.
Playing songs from all of their albums, they had the slightly older crowd eating out of their hands. The venue was quite spacious and people were dancing and swaying freely. Without meaning to be patronising, it was nice to see a whole room of people of all ages unashamedly dancing away and just having a good time.
The Raveonettes just stand there looking super ice cool and playing pricelessly cool music. Songs from their latest album are especially of tha ilk; it sounds even more LA, even more girl-group inspired and is driven by lovely soft melodies over layers of feedback in a modern interpretation of wall-of-sound. Sharin, being impossibly beautiful and glamorous is subject to much male fawning and gazing and it's sad to note the large group of 40 year old males with their camera phones hoisted in the air taking pictures of her like she is a piece of meat.
Sharin and Sune seemed unphased by the attention and played on. On earlier tours their performance has been slightly more intense and dirty, and involved more interaction between Sharin and Sune. I suppose that seems less genuine if the sound of the new material is less intense and more poppy. With the album released last week in the USA, it looks like they'll be on the road for a while, so I hope they will end uo injecting some of their olf bad selves into their performances!
posted by Unknown at 2/20/2008 11:25:00 pm
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