It’s getting close to Christmas time, so if you haven’t gotten the tree up, your presents bought, and eggnog isn’t sitting in the refrigerator, I would recommend doing that now. Another thing I would suggest is checking out The Raveonettes fantastic Christmas song appropriately titled “The Christmas Song”, which may be the greatest holiday tune I’ve heard in a long time. Although bizarrely released on the TV show The OC’s Xmas album, “The Christmas Song” features all the best things about The Raveonettes: amazing guitar work, great airy harmonies, sing-along lyrics, and a little pizazz thrown in for the finale.
Now don’t get me wrong, the Xmas tune is great, but it’s chump change compared to what The Raveonettes have done in their career. Releasing some of my favorite albums of the latter half of the decade, this Danish duo has got the “60s with a twist” act down pat, providing noisy renditions of timeless pop melodies. Their latest effort, In and Out of Control, is arguably their best release, but unfortunately it has gone unnoticed in the blogosphere (but, ironically enough, not on Gossip Girls which has featured two of their tracks on the show).
Taking the strategy of composing a full-length from a string of 45s that their golden-oldies predecessors mastered, every track on In and Out — from the beginning bombastic “Bang!” to the wonderfully peaceful “Wine” conclusion — could serve as an attractable single. Although the album consists of only 11-tracks which, when combined, can barely outlast an episode of Seinfeld, The Raveonettes provide no throw-away or “filler” songs that so many bands seem to be using these days. In and Out is one-hundred percent pure noisy indie-pop gold.
After taking a cursory glance at the track titles (“Oh I Buried You Today”, “D.R.U.G.S.”, etc…), one would expect either heavy metal or hard-core emo oozing from every poor of this band, and this musical chiaroscuro of lighthearted instrumentals with dark lyrical content is exactly what makes this band so great. It’s easy for anyone to love what’s coming out of Sune Rose Wagner’s guitar on tracks like “Suicide”, but it’s tough to swallow the narratives evinced in the verses (“Your boyfriend’s mean / and your mom’s a bitch / little runaway girl / do it again do it again”). Even though the song is strongly against taking your own life (the line “lick your lips / and fuck suicide” is more than enough to determine this), it’s still not particularly a choice topic to accompany such a poppy song. An even more flagrant example of this dark lyrical undercurrent is the song “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)” — which somehow made it onto the conservative-leaning NPR Song of the Day. Although I wholeheartedly agree with the anti-rape message, it’s just shocking to hear it sung in such sweet harmony.
To better check out their style, here are a band released mp3 and an acoustic rendition (+ interview) of their song “Breaking Into Cars”:
Tags: Christmas Song, In and Out of Control, mp3, The Raveonettes
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