THE RAVEONETTES
WHIP IT ON
CRUNCHY FROG
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Listening to the Raveonettes’ debut album Whip It On and one might think they have been dropped into a Frankie Avalon and Annette Funnicello surf movie. Maybe a garage punk-rock concert a la 1970s Ramones. Or perhaps a late 1990s rave in lower Manhattan. This Danish duo weaves together several genres across different generations to create a set of eight songs that has wide-ranging appeal.
. Make no mistake, though. The album is saturated with a combination of distortion-pedal fury and classic rockabilly twang – all recorded in haunting, dissonant B-flat minor that has become wildly popular. (Think The Hives with more of an edge.) This sound is no more evident than on the first track, the campy titled “Attack of the Ghost Riders”. The song screeches into a droned-out ‘surf-movie’ guitar riff before blasting into fully-amplified, garage-rock glory; dirty distortion, blaring wah-wah effects and a steady, driving drum beat keeps listeners on edge from start to finish. The next track, “Veronica Fever” is reminiscent of 1970s synth-punks Suicide; crashing guitars over a 4/4 drum beat and hissing maracas. Its power is in its simplicity. Sune Rose Wagner’s vocals, like that of most of the album, sounds as if he recorded them after a night of binge-drinking. They are breathy, drawn out and somewhat depressed, adding to the song’s overall heaviness. “Do You Believe Her”, “Chains” and “Cops On Our Tale” are high-energy. Blaring punked-out guitars, punchy drum patterns and hard-hitting bass-lines. Wagner’s drowned out vocals do not soften their texture, either. Their eerie B-flat minor dissonance adds a quiet intensity to the song. Lyrics like “The cops are on our tail, but that’s alright/Fuck you” add a dollop of aggression as well. The pace slows down on “Bowels of the Beast”, a heavy, brooding song reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”. Use of a tambourine and jingle bells add to the undertones of the melodies, giving the song a darkness that is its own. On the outro, “Beat City”, the Raveonettes return to the feverish tempo of the rest of the album: twangy, edgy guitars, simple, but driving beat patterns and vocals bursting with sexual and drug-fueled energy. Everyone seems to be crazed over The Hives with their Kinks-esque look and jagged, driving garage-band sound. Whip It On proves that the Raveonettes can not only play The Hives’ brand of music better than they can. It shows that a band a fraction of the Hives’ size can reach out beyond the genre’s boundaries, weaving in flecks of rockabilly, flashes of techno and shreds of punk to create an album more dynamic than The Hives could ever hope to make.

----Eric V. White