I don’t know about you but I just love the fusion of ’60s pop and scuzzy walls of post-punk guitars: think Jesus & Mary Chain, My Chemical Romance and, of course, da brudders Ramone, melody and noise in a perfect pairing. Arguably, the Cramps started off this attractive meeting of opposites back in the mid 70’s. The baton has since passed to and fro, between froth and feedback, so often as to make it sometimes difficult to where it all started. (The answer, by the way, is probably Phil Spector.)
Denmark’s Raveonettes, the not-husband & wife duo of guitarist/vocalist Sune Rose Wagner and bassist/vocalist Sharin Foo, know this. They’ve spent their career allying close two-part harmonies into a scaffold of guitar noise. With their last album having been released in the Mesozoic era of 2017, many had deemed the band lost in action.
But Cleopatra Records knew otherwise. That L.A. institution has been the home of innumerable records that record and relate the co-terminosity of opposing genres. In fact, they featured the Raveonettes’ version of “The End,” that epic Doors song, etched forever into Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, for their somewhat limply titled Indie Goes Pop compilation. Now they have encouraged the duo to embark on a set of ’60s covers. Given the pair started off singing Everly Brothers songs in the clubs of Copenhagen, this isn’t too much a stretch. The love for the material still remains extant within their performance, if a little dialed back, on The Raveonettes Sing….
It isn’t actually with the Everlys that they start The Raveonettes Sing…; that honor goes to Spector and “I Love How You Love Me,” which strays little from the original. Closeasthis harmony vocals, with a rich backing chorale of aaahs added, provide a lush backwash. Less a wall of sound, the guitar, bass and drums form a sturdy picket fence, marrying, implausibly, the lo-fi with hi. Really, it mostly serves as an appetizer, as it is with “Goo Goo Muck” that The Raveonettes Sing… really takes off. Imagine a sanitized Cramps signed up for Jac Holzman’s Elektra Records a decade earlier than they actually existed (my ears capture a sound of Arthur Lee and Love). There is some extraneous sound, just for the sake of it, in the middle eight, but not enough to lose the plot, and it is a winner. (STOP PRESS: The Cramps song is actually a cover! It was a 1962 track by Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads! Who knew, every day’s a school day, etc etc.)
Duane Eddy’s “The Girl On Death Row” gets an intriguing refashioning. Some of the twang remains, but rather than the yearningly familiar vocal of Lee Hazlewood, who wrote the song, Wagner gifts the song with a delicate alto, a choirboy, in the mold of Carl Wilson. With Foo slotting alongside, it casts a new and intriguing light on what might otherwise seem too hoary an old song. The drums are dumb and deliberately simple, that contrast the glue that binds. At last we do get the Everlys, a vocally sublime rendition, again with that glorious plod of drums. (I get that not all will appreciate their lumpen, where lumpen is good, presence, seeing the sequencing of the album a necessary part of acclimatizing.)
A kitschy and retro guitar sparkle, with a tinkling keyboard, graces “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Wagner’s voice is barely balanced on the cusp of the uncertainty, and the gender switch is a neat touch. Foo then picks up the lead for “Venus In Furs,” a song ideally suited to this sort of arrangement. A little too much so, in truth, given the myriad covers broadly in this semi-psychedelicized suit of clothing. But it fits, and is in context, so we’ll allow it, especially as the drums kick into a noughties indie groove.
“Wishing” had me scouring the vaults, at first unfamiliar with the melody, missing the hiccupping guitar sound of Buddy Holly, it being one of his posthumous releases. Here it becomes a proto-surf ballad, a veneer of no harm, more Jan and Dean than Beach Boys. Or rather, more in the vein of UK surf-punks, the Barracudas.
The next song is Gram Parsons’ “Return of the Grievous Angel.” It’s a surprising choice, but ultimately a welcome one, extending the range of what might have become too narrow a selection. It offers a decent jangle-pop iteration, midway between one the 1965 Byrds might have captured and Evan Dando’s later version. Foo’s harmony escapes entirely any Emmylou comparison, completing the transition of the song from Parson’s Florida to the dodgier end of Venice Beach. (Those interested might wish to hear the duo’s take on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” the flip side of a 2005 single.)
“Shaking All Over” is just too obvious, the echo-drenched riff so hardwired into any version as to disallow anything much in the way of reinterpretation. And there isn’t any here, notwithstanding some sounds of the sea, and of waves breaking. Likewise, “Leader of the Pack” tries just a little too hard to be edgy, with tongues a little too visibly lodged in cheeks. Which is a shame, as it is a song that could stand a new lick of paint, something few have ever managed to successfully apply, if any. You can give marks for effort, or maybe just skip this last track or two.
Did The Raveonettes Sing… demand to be made? Is it an essential for any cover lovers’ collection? Probably not and possibly not, in that order, but I am still glad they made it. In the mood for something neither big nor clever, on a sunny day at the sea, or even on a rainy day in Birmingham, it gives a half hour or so of untroublesome and untroubled pleasure. Sometimes, that’s enough.
(The CD version includes tacked on versions of “The End,” as described above, and another earlier cover by the band, that of The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright,” neither of which fit into the context and seem unnecessary for other than sales.)
The Raveonettes Sing tracklisting:
- I Love How You Love Me (The Paris Sisters cover)
- Goo Goo Muck (Ronnie Cook & the Gaylads cover)
- The Girl on Death Row (Duane Eddy, feat. Lee Hazlewood cover)
- All I Have To Do Is Dream (The Everly Brothers cover)
- Will You Love Me Tomorrow (The Shirelles cover)
- Venus in Furs (The Velvet Underground cover)
- Wishing (Buddy Holly cover)
- Return of the Grievous Angel (Gram Parsons cover)
- Shakin’ All Over (Vince Taylor cover)
- Leader of the Pack (The Shangri-Las cover)
