Bookery: Raveonettes
Mar 5, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Brendan Kiefer
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Bookery Reading 1
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Bookery Reading 2
Leave it up to Sharin Foo to bring the mood down a billion pegs with this Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, or better yet, if we're going to be pointing fingers, laying the blame on the sad sack with all of the morals would be more precise. It's all you Anderson. Foo and her Raveonettes are known to work in the smoke and the fog, but never do they linger too long in the regal dimension of depressed dumpiness. The way she reads "The Little Girl With The Sulphursticks," recalls the infernal winter of a dry voice, with a compassionate curl to its bear hug that only takes in an empty swoosh of open space, the living and breathing person couldn't feel the embrace if he or she wanted to. Foo speaks about the hungry beggar girl, peddling wares on the streets in order to buy bread or to find scraps to eat to help line her body with muscle and strength to continue surviving the difficult coldness. She has a fist of matchsticks that she lights occasionally to stave off the worst of the bitter chill. The band's latest album, Lust Lust Lust, is another dutiful rock and roll album of raw simplicity that recalls the Buddy Holly and early Roy Orbison days if they'd had the privilege of being influenced by Joy Division and The Smiths, not just a youth without rock and roll. It's an impossible, time-bending comparison, but The Raveonettes don't make anything a simple sale - finding a way to make sunny skies goth, springing with contorted features and a smoking hot blistering of lord knows what. It works for us and you might just be able to cook with it. You just might be able to do anything you'd like with the resulting sound, a patchy kind of love that that gives you a lot of different looks while wearing the same clothing - the smiles, the silence, the desperation, the lonely tempo and the fluttering beat beat beat.
"Raveonettes Official Site":http://www.theraveonettes.com
"Vice Records":http://www.vicerecords.com
