The Raveonettes are not in your face. They don’t dazzle you with pyrotechnics or a glut of showmanship; they are the smart kids in the back of the classroom who aren’t trying to impress anyone. Music just comes natural to them, and at a recent show in San Francisco they naturally brought the house down.
In town to support the release of their new LP
Chain Gang of Love, band members Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo dispensed quickly with pleasantries and dropped some serious and blasting sound on anxious onlookers at the Great American. I discovered quickly that it’s best to batten down whatever hatches you have when entering the chosen den of the Raveonettes for the evening. The pleasant sound of their harmonized vocals is surrounded by an ear-shattering shell. You are listening to a lullaby in a hurricane; someone is patting you neatly on the head as you look up at an oncoming tidal wave.
Fans of the duo, accompanied on this tour by jazz drummer Jakob Hoyer and guitarist Manoj Ramdas, arrived prepared for the onslaught with earplugs and feet firmly planted. True to form, songs such as “Noisy Summer” nearly blew the chandeliers off the ornate ceiling, but Foo and Wagner were kind enough to also lighten the audio load with harmonic pieces like “Love Can Destroy Everything”(which they dedicated to the late Johnny Cash). The band offered a unique mix of enchanting, dual vocals combined with simple, unmerciful rock. It was clear from the start that they were as regimented in their shows as they are in their records. The songs were consistently strong and driving, delivering hard, resonant noise in a catchy and succinct (the tunes were usually around 3 minutes long) package.
Natives of Denmark, Wagner and Foo grew up with varied musical backgrounds. Wagner’s early influences included Bob Dylan, Dire Straits and Buddy Holly, and Foo actually studied dhrupad, an ancient style of Hindustani classical music. These disparate influences, as well as the pair’s musical chemistry, were evident particularly in their renditions of “The Love Gang” and “That Great Love Sound”. They pitched Foo’s blonde to Wagner’s brunette--beautifully opposed in appearance and in voice—in a fascinating exhibition of choral yin and yang.
The crowd that packed the Great American for the show was also impressive in its diversity. Though not one to judge or pigeonhole, I usually enter a show with a clear and usually fairly accurate prediction on the demographic and disposition of the audience—but this crowd was different. Age ranged from fresh out of college to just short of retirement. There was no predictability in dress or demeanor; people’s commonalities seemed to rest squarely in the nest of good music. Towards the end of the night, haunting tunes like “Attack of the Ghost Riders” and “Cops on our Tail” even lifted some of the more senior among us out of their seats to join their younger peers.
Overall, this night brought me back to an appreciation of real rock and roll—that sound, ever-changing and hard to define, as it was meant to be.
