The Raveonettes – Chain Gang Of Love (CD)
Sound:
B Music: B-
Why
is it when a band brags about not writing songs over three minutes long, the
listening public is supposed to care? If
I had a dollar for everytime I read this boast in a magazine, I'd have enough
money to put a down payment on a new car. The truth is that size doesn't matter in rock
'n roll. Quantity, not quality. I mean, "Good Vibrations" is three-and-a-half minutes, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is six minutes,
and "Concierto De Arajunez"
is nineteen minutes. . . and they're all great songs.
The
Raveonettes, two cute kids from Denmark, are
a band that dares to keep their songs concise. Not only do they avoid the dreaded
three-minute mark like the plague, they decided to write all the songs on Chain Gang Of Love, their first
full-length release, in the key of B-flat major. Suffice to say, if you hate bands whose songs
all the sound the same, stay the hell away from The Raveonettes, because even
33 minutes (the length of the CD) of their music will tire you out.
However,
one should give these folks some credit for their timbre. For those who don't know, timbre is the
texture of the music. The duo has
engineered a sound and timbre that comes off like a tribute to the history of
recorded music. They've got the
cavernous surf guitar (without surf guitar shredding, though) and fuzz bass
tone from the early-to-mid 60s. They've
got bits of white noise that remind of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, and bored vocal deliveries that recall that
mid-1990s alternative/underground in all its glory. It's an intense mélange. Their lyrics are all inarticulation ("I
wanna find some words to say" on "Untamed
Girls"), street life, and the red-light district ("Remember" and "The Truth About Johnny"). There is plenty of space on "Chain
Gang" for talk about love: four songs with "love" in the title. "Love" is to the Raveonettes what
"party" is to Andrew W.K.
The
PCM CD sound is good for what we can expect from 16bit/44.1kHz limits can
deliver today, but this CD has something in its layers that will not always
allow it to play clearly on all CD, CD-ROM, DVD and DVD-ROM players. This could be copyright protection of some
sort, so keep your receipt if you have any trouble.
Ah,
but is it any good? Well, The Raveonettes
are a "critic's favorite" the world over, if that means anything. But over the course of Chain Gang's thirteen songs, I couldn't help but feel pummeled by
their massive sound. They don't have a
Spector-esque wall of sound, but a cave full of echo and noise. If you like retro rock with Velvet
Underground-tinged lyrics, then The Raveonettes are for you. Perhaps the positive reaction to this album
will inspire the band to attempt songs in other keys.
- Michael J. Farmer
