Raveonettes Blame It On The Dane

The Raveonettes love to keep you guessing.

Since releasing Whip It On in 2002, the '60s girl group-loving, Jesus And Mary Chain-channeling Danes have been tantalizing and frustrating fans with their double-edged sword of irresistibly catchy pop and ear-splitting guitar noise. One minute they're dark and dangerous, the next they're light-hearted and fun.

They've always seemed to excel at crossing back and forth between the line that splits their yin and yang. After over-polishing their sound and landing far too high on the pop scale with 2005's Pretty In Black, the band regrouped and fought back with the colder, minimal and pointedly darker Lust Lust Lust last year.

New album In And Out Of Control appears to be the first Raveonettes album to marry the band's two distinct personalities into one cohesive whole. Everything you've ever loved about The Raveonettes is on this record, and it's their best outing since the near-masterpiece, Chain Gang Of Love.

CHARTattack talked to guitarist and co-vocalist Sharin Foo about The Raveonettes' unique recording experience, the band's need to always change themselves and their current desire to revamp their live show.

CHARTattack: While recording the new album you posted demos of the songs for downloading, which was a great way to get fans really excited for the finished product. What prompted this idea?
Sharin Foo: It was more like an invitation into the creative process. We wanted to invite people to live look-ins so they could watch us work in the studio for a few hours for a couple of days. And then we posted the songs.

We did it for Lust Lust Lust as well, and we just think it might be interesting if you're a real fan to see the progress of a song when you're in the studio. We were looking to give our fans an expanded experience.

Does allowing your fans that kind of access change the whole writing and recording process for you?
I guess we'd always talked about the intimacy of sharing so much. Sometimes it can feel hard because the vocals aren't right and they might be a little bit out of tune because they're like sketches. But I think people look at painter's sketches and find them interesting to see how they come up with the final painting. And I think it's the same thing with musicians — it's nice to see the different stages of a song.

Do you ever feel vulnerable letting your fans see so much of the band?
I think it's a strength if you can show your vulnerability. I think it's more vanity than mystique when people want to keep things a secret.

How do you explain The Raveonettes' penchant for going back and forth between your poppy and harder sounds, and your lighter and darker sides? Is this representative of the band's overall personality?
I've thought about it and I think in a way it's a very Danish thing — blame it on the Danes! In a way, when it's been too fun for a while, it can't be fun all the time or else it's not fun anymore, y'know? And if it's too dark too long, it's like, "OK, this is way too pretentious, let's have some fun!" So it's kind of that whole reactionary thing.

Who in the band is responsible for the darker material?
I think it's pretty much split between Sune [Rose Wagner, guitarist/vocalist] and I. With this album, our producer [Thomas Troelsen] definitely gravitated towards all the ideas and songs that were in major, which I always find to be happier songs.

I think we do naturally gravitate towards the more minor material that's more melancholic and darker sounding and more heavy, but I do really like that we embraced the very melodic part of The Raveonettes on this album, and the very celebratory side to us. It was pretty fun.

Also, when we play the new songs live there's so much energy in them. We've played half the material at some of the festival shows this summer and it's pretty fun, I have to say.

The Raveonettes' live format is often different with each tour. What dictates how the band will be represented live?
Often, it's pretty much the album that decides and how the album turned out. Lust Lust Lust was very minimal and that's why we toured as a three-piece. We wanted it to be really strictly minimal with the setup. And that's why we had that drummer standing up and playing a floor tom and snare to have that really primal feel to it. And all the tracks and samples were really in-focus, and we wanted to have that industrial sound on those songs.

But for Pretty In Black, it was the other way around, having a big band, three guitars, bass and drums. It felt like more of a full band in the traditional organic sense.

What can we expect with the In And Out Of Control tour?
I'll tell you what — for Lust Lust Lust we kind of have to admit we started missing the feeling of a bass guitar onstage. We had the bass on tracks, but it's just not the same.

So for this album we knew we needed to have the bass live, and I think it's pretty gratifying. We also feel that seeing our band live needs to be more of a live experience. We've been really good at playing our songs the way they sound on record, but we feel like we need to shake things up a bit. We've been talking about it, so hopefully we can do it!