Report: Raveonettes Live in Northampton

Rave on. April 18 at Pearl Street in Northampton, Mass., the Danish duo - abetted by opener Tamaryn - showcased their new album.

Text & Photos by Jennifer Kelly

A lot has happened since the last time I saw the Raveonettes on a minor stop in their Chain Gang of Love tour sometime back in the mid-00s. Their splice of girl group melody and rackety, effect-driven guitar sounded new then, or at least relatively unusual. It was still half a decade before Vivian Girls, Pains of Being Pure at Heart and their many followers would colonize this blend of haze and sweetness. Rock was back, at least temporarily, and there was plenty of room for a gorgeous blonde bass player, a floorboard's worth of guitar pedals and a sound that linked the Ronettes to the Ventures to the Jesus & Mary Chain.

As it turns out, there's still some room for Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo, whose live act has gotten sharper even as their recorded output has grown more diffuse and atmospheric. For this tour, they've got a slate of spooky tunes - they play the bulk of new Raven from the Grave tonight - as well as a beefed up line-up. In addition to the band's two main members, there are two other guys in tow. For much of the night, they play short-handed drum sets - just a snare, floor tom, crash cymbal and tambourine - in perfect synchronization, pounding out primitive, booming beats that give even the Raveonette's airiest new songs a rush of adrenaline. The set is heavy on new material, but also includes selections from Whip It On, Chain Gang of Love, Lust Lust Lust, and In and Out of Control, plus at least one cover.

But first, Tamaryn, a wavy-haired singer from New Zealand (by way of San Francisco), whose The Waves came out last fall on Mexican Summer. With guitarist and producer Rex John Silverton, she is working the same glistening drones and space-rocking miasmas as labelmates No Joy, with a hint of Zola Jesus' psychic disintegration added in. I arrive just at the end of her set, her partner's effects winding down like a helicopter landing, and wish I'd heard more.

Tamaryn is done at nine (band's only start on time when I'm late, it seems), and the Raveonettes won't go on until after 10, so there's plenty of time to observe the set-up process. Two techs wander around fixing wiring, one of them with a miner's headlight. Three sets of guitar pedals - 18 of them in all - are hauled to the stage. A sheet of paper that looks like a set list is taped to the floor where Wagner will play, but it's too short to be a set list and anyway, doesn't appear to have any Raveonettes songs on it. Only later, when an actual set list materializes do I realize that it's a diagram for Wagner's effects lay-out, with words like "Hole" and "Bliss" indicating where his foot goes for what song. There are also a lot of special lights and a set of amps that read "Rave" and "On" in the strobe flash. I realize, finally, why there's an "o" in Raveonettes - never occurred to me before.

Finally, the Raveonettes come on stage, Wagner in a "Back to the Future" tee-shirt, Foo all in black, her blonde hair cut in a neat, geometrical bob. "We've been here before," she says, smiling shyly into the mic, and to judge by the whoop, I'm not the only one that's back for the second time.   The band is not big on chatter, however, so we dive right into a brace of Raven from the Grave tunes, the booming drums and screaming guitars of "Recharge and Revolt," the bell-like synths of "War in Heaven," the languid chords and dreamy melody of "Let Me On Out."

Then, in a shift towards the past, the band revisits Lust Lust Lust's "Dead Sound," its velvety harmonies joined to pounding, galloping, double drumming. The strobe lights are going off in epilepsy-inducing bursts, and something wild is happening in the intersection of arching guitars and obliterating drums. (I am also thinking, why do they care whether I use a camera flash or not, if they're going to work in a continual stutter of flashes?)  There are a few more older songs, "Noisy Summer", "Love in a Trash Can" and "Lust Lust Lust."

You can't help but notice the drop in intensity, when the band goes back to its new material. Slow, hazy "Apparitions" with its interlocking guitars and sudden crashing chords drifts through chilly, spectral spaces. Two drummers are in play here, putting spine under its slow-spooling melodies, but it's a whole different feel from the earlier material. "Evil Seeds" follows, guitars oscillating, Twilight Zone-style between two notes, the beat, when it comes, snatched whole from Spector's "Be My Baby." There's a menace in this song, a James Bond-ish aura of slinky threat.  "Ignite," my favorite of the new songs, comes next, its howling surf guitar and big rhythms blowing up until it fills the room.

Then, just as I'm coming to terms with the Raven songs, the band pulls out two from the distant past - "My Tornado" and "Attack of the Ghost Riders" - which make it clear what they've left behind.  "Attack," in particular, is blown up to massive proportions by booming drums and exploding fireballs of feedback. "It goes something like this..." Foo whispers in the midst of "Ghost Riders," and a tidal wave of noise builds behind her, carrying the song and the show into a whole other space. The band closes its main set with delicate doo-woppy "My Time's Up" from the current album. The encore, which follows closely, is "Forget That You're Young" and a cover of the Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be Adored." The whole thing is over by 11 o'clock, but it's a good show, and I don't think anyone feels cheated.

The main take-away is that the Raveonettes are as good a band as they've ever been live, way tighter and more effective than they were the last time I saw them and benefitting from the larger sound that comes with two drummers (or, in some songs, a drummer and an extra guitar player). Their new album is a shift in style which not everyone's going to be on board with, but there are some good songs on it. And, in any case, even the older material sounds better than it ever has in concert. Rave on, indeed.