>>PREVIEW
THE RAVEONETTES
Friday, April 27
Broken City
There’s a wistful innocence in Sune Rose Wagner’s voice that belies the shades of midnight he’s usually dressed in. Over the telephone, he sounds like a grown-up version of a soft-spoken high school rebel. The kind of gentle rebel who would ditch class to smoke cigarettes behind the school building, shyly flirt with girls and obsessively discuss records with pals.
The front man of The Raveonettes is certainly enigmatic, but candidly fields questions about his fondness for Bruce Brown surf movies, his love/hate relationship with L.A. and how he sequesters himself away from family, friends and lovers to create some of the most exciting tunes written since Buddy Holly’s death.
"I don’t really have that many close friends here," reveals Wagner from his apartment in Manhattan. "I guess I decide not to ’cause I’m very much a homebody and I like to be alone. But when I do go out, I have some really nice acquaintances – a really good circle of friends, actually. They know how I am, so they’re not the type of (people) who want to call me everyday and try to get me out. They know that when I’m ready to go out, I’ll call them."
Wagner’s social circle in Manhattan’s Lower East side includes fellow talented enigma Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and drone rocker Jennifer Fraser (The Warlocks). Like his stunning musical partner, Sharin Foo, Wagner’s love interest lives in L.A. Unlike Foo, who moved across the country to be with her boyfriend, Wagner appreciates the space and remains in New York. Fully immersed in writing mode, Wagner is concentrating on composing material for The Raveonettes’s fourth album, which already sounds like a killer.
"We’ve done some pretty nostalgic music in the past, but I want to go a step further. I really want it to have much more of a surf feeling, but a very raw surf feeling. I want it to have all the elements that we’ve always had, but I want to combine them into one…. Like the Ramones. They were the Ramones. They sounded like the Ramones. I want us to sound like The Raveonettes.
"I like what we have going. If we can combine all the stuff that we have and go one step further – make it more noisy than we’ve ever done and make it more quiet than we’ve ever done. I want to go total out. There’ll be no acoustic guitars on this album. It’ll be a very electric album. There’ll be really good uptempo songs, really nice noisy stuff and really slow, sad and nostalgic songs. Like, so slow, you can’t dance to them.
"This is gonna be the shit. That’s what I’m hoping for."
Judging by the demos, Wagner is going to get his wish. Everything is tenderly tuned to the same key of passionate longing not heard since the unrequited guitar ringing throughout Santo & Johnny’s "Sleepwalk." There’s the whitewash of Wagner’s guitar in "Black Satin," the evocative "Lust" and bubblegummy "I Know That You Want the Candy." Wagner’s doomy and spellbinding "The Beat Dies" steals the show. With haunting vocals, Foo comes across like an optimistic angel swimming in the murk of despair like David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s nightingale, Julee Cruise.
But given the lyrical references to the Pacific Ocean and the buoyant surf guitars, isn’t Wagner on the wrong coast?
"I like surf movies and stuff like that because I like the whole notion of riding a wave and being with the ocean and being where the sun sets. The sun drowns every night right in front of you. It’s a crazy feeling.
"I’m probably more of a west coast boy at heart. But I can’t really see myself living there because it’ll be too close to what I consider nostalgia and sadness. I don’t think that I would be happy there. I’m a pretty happy person, but I definitely have a dark side that comes across in my music. It’s very emotional for me to write songs, I lock myself (away).
"It’s easier to escape out here. It’s because there’s so many things to do. I always feel like when I’m in L.A. that it feels like I’m at the end of the world, like there’s nowhere for me to go. I can’t go any further and I’m too isolated. I like to have more contact with people, in that sense, when I need it."
Whenever necessary, Wagner can get his fix for nostalgia each time he passes by what he calls the skeleton that was CBGB. CBGB was the first club The Raveonettes played when they came to the U.S. and where they were ceremoniously discovered by David Fricke of Rolling Stone.
"Had we not played there, we might not have gotten anywhere close to where we are today."
Wagner barely pauses for a breath before finishing his thought.
"But today, that’s a hole. There would always be shitty bands there. The service was not very good, and the place is just a mess. And after you couldn’t even smoke in there anymore, it was like, well, what’s the fuckin’ point, anyways?"
Spoken like a true rock ’n’ roll rebel. |
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