The Raveonettes: Interview/Feature (Boston Phoenix, 1/09/09

Kicking the habits: The Raveonettes change (for a change)

I can't be the only one who, asked to name the most face-melting guitar moment in the last couple of years of recorded music, would point to the 1:57 mark (and onward) of "Aly, Walk with Me," the opening track on the Raveonettes' 2007 release Lust Lust Lust. It's a loud, soul-shattering, noteless vortex of feedback that multiplies and divides like the edge of a fractal as viewed through a thousand tiny mirrors, and it occurs in what is an otherwise baleful and Nick Cavey funereal trudge.

"I'm just so happy that we were able to capture that sound with that take," explains guitarist and songwriter Sune Rose Wagner. "We used to have a lot of songs back in the days before we recorded that were very dissonant, but I think we felt that we wanted to be more of a melodic band and to have a nice melody that would create tension with the noise. I don't think that we can make a more harsh noise than the one on 'Aly, Walk with Me' — it's kind of a pinnacle, for us, of the whole noise thing, that's going to be a very hard one to top. I don't know if we want to try it again. But it's a beautiful sound."

Anyone familiar with Wagner's œuvre with the Raveonettes (who come to the Paradise next Thursday) should be surprised by the idea that, having created something awesome, he's ready to move on to something different. His successful and brutally stylish rock duo exploded out of Copenhagen in the early naughts, armed with tasteful worn-on-sleeve influences that highlighted both his switchblade six-string Jesus-and-Mary-Chain-isms and vocalist Sharin Foo's Nico-esque ice-queen charm. They proceeded to churn out record after record of high quality and consistent sound. Has he become unstuck?

"I think we have done a lot of — well, I don't want to say the same things, but I think that we have taken a lot of our early influences, like '60s girl groups, Buddy Holly, Sonic Youth, and used them a lot. And I don't really know if it's interesting to keep going down that same road. I mean, I'm just as crazy about a band like the Doors as I am about Buddy Holly, even though they're completely different things. And you know, I love a lot of music from the '70s and '80s — influences that normally wouldn't show up in our songs."

Early on, the Raveonettes put self-conscious constraints on their work: their first EP, 2002's Whip It On, is, as it says on the album cover, "recorded in glorious B-flat minor," and their follow-up LP, 2003's Chain Gang of Love (the cover of which features Wagner and Foo done up in '50s Wild One gear), is "recorded in B-flat major"; neither record offers any song that surpasses the 3:15 mark. As with the Dogme 95 movement of filmmaker and fellow Dane Lars von Trier, these limits were imposed to focus the duo's creative energies. "Without constraints, you run the risk of having the whole thing fall apart. It's more of having creative constraints on yourself — and that's what we wanted. We always strived to be something other than an ordinary rock band."

Over time, however, the ordinary caught up with them. "I think that in the beginning we did an incredible amount of touring, and it was very unhealthy. We ended up playing a lot of shows that we didn't really care about, and I think that, you know, people could see that! I guess now we have to rebuild our reputation as a live band. Fortunately, we're totally into touring now, and getting a lot better. I'm enjoying it now, but for a while when we were on tour all we wanted to do was sit at home and write pop, you know?"

Wagner isn't kidding about sitting home writing pop: the band's current bicoastal set-up means that "I'll write songs at home, and when I have songs that I think are good for us, I'll send them to her [Foo] and get her opinion on them, and she'll say what she likes about it and what she doesn't like about it." While he's writing the songs alone in New York, Foo is raising her newborn baby on the West Coast. It's proved to be their greatest challenge. "To make the new album, first off we need to have discussions," Wagner continues. "Discussions help Sharin and me come up with something interesting. I do miss, sometimes, being in the same city, because you can resolve things much faster face to face."

The four EPs they released in 2008 showcase a looser outfit willing to experiment not just with noise but with dancebeat tropes (as on the Sometimes They Drop By EP) as well as trance and synth work (as on the Beauty Dies EP). "Yeah, it's nice — doing the EPs, we felt like we could pretty much do whatever we wanted to do. Like this song called 'Young and Beautiful' [off Beauty Dies], which is very much an '80s song with a keyboard line in it. The good thing about that is that you don't have to have 10 or 12 songs that have to be consistent together. You can write whatever comes to mind, whatever you're in the mood for. I like both things, though: the freedom of the EPs and the challenge of making a proper album."

Those shifts to moments of pure psych on Lust Lust Lust were a turning point in Wagner's getting back into the swing of playing live again. "For that record, I used the same set-up that I always use, but it's all how you work it. It's just the way that the guitars play, it comes out different every time, and I love that. It's what's so great about playing live. When you're playing loud, you never know what it's going to sound like. The way the room is, the way you stand — I love the way you just never know."

THE RAVEONETTES | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | January 15 at 8 pm | $16.50 | 617.562.8800 or www.thedise.com

Crooked X: Interview (Boston Phoenix, 1/09/09)

Your New Favorite Teenage Rock N Roll High School Metal Music Machine

Before I climb onto the enormo tour bus of Oklahoma modern rockers Crooked X to conduct an interview under the watchful eye of their management, I meet up with them at a Dunkin' Donuts, and witness their drummer, Boomer, ask his road manager, with a straight face, if they have Egg McMuffins here. Now, I suppose you could be rolling your eyes here at Spinal Tap excess and common-man-out-of-touch-ness and whatnot, but keep in mind that Boomer (and the rest of Crooked X) are all 14 years old -- so pardon them for their child-like naivete. Because really, what did your freshman-year high school rock band sound like? And had you done tours with Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper before you were Bar Mitzvah-age? Like I said, management (and parents) were in the room when I talked to the band, so I couldn't get the skinny on any illicit tour activity -- but honestly, these kids seem way too focused on rocking the world and making it big, in that order, to really be distracted by the high life. They've been doing this since they were 8 and 9 years old (!) -- so while other kids their age are playing Rock Band, they're recording songs that get on to Rock Band. And rocking the nation one auditorium at a time.

DB: Tell me how the band started.

FORREST (vocals, guitar): Me and Boomer knew each other since we were in the womb. We've grown up together: we played on the same football team, and we hadn't won a game all year. Both of our dads coached the team, and they were talking and they were like "Well, my son plays guitar, does your son play drums? Let's get them together and let them have some fun." So we went back to Boomer's garage and learned some Metallica and AC/DC songs.

JOSH (bass): The whole thing slowly built, and we didn't know it while it was happening. We were just having fun.

JESSE (guitar, vocals): We weren't really thinking about, you know, getting songs on the radio, when we started. We were just getting together, on the weekend, you know-- I don't know, man, we just love it, we love playing together.

DB: What was your first show like?

FORREST: Our first show was my sister's birthday party, four or five years ago, I think it was fifth or sixth grade. After the show, we thought we did awesome, we thought we were the stuff. Then we saw the video and we were like "Oh, we have a lot of work to do."

JESSE (guitar, vocals): We've definitely grown together as a band -- we practice now four, five, six days a week, three to four hours a day. The longest we've ever taken off is 10 days in the last four years.

DB: Tell me about your first single, "Rock And Roll Dream": it sounds a lot different than your other, more metallic tunes.

FORREST: That song, that's kind of our singalong song. We have a lot of heavier stuff on our album, kind of Southern metal, but we needed some song that would give us some leverage, and "Rock and Roll Dream" is kind of the song that all the little kiddies will sing along to, so that's what that song's about.

BOOMER: We wrote that song needing, like, a hook, because every big band out there needs a hook in their song to at least make it on the radio, so I guess you could say that that's our radio song.

JOSH: We're hoping that song will get our other songs out there, you know?

DB: You guys are 14 years old and you do this band full-time: what was the decision like to take the band seriously at such a young age?

FORREST: It was tough because we had to sit down and say "Is this what we really want?". We knew that there was gonna be a lot of sacrifice, and there are a lot of things that we're not able to do that most kids do, like have a social life at school! But on the upside, we're doing things that other kids may never do, so we're growing up in a different way.

JESSE: We're very fortunate to be in our position.

BOOMER: When we were first starting out, my dad and Jesse's dad told us "Alright, if you guys want to get serious, do it now and we'll book you shows and stuff; if not, you can be a garage band and make it like that." And we all agreed that this is what we want to do, this is how we want to make our living.

Factory Records: Communications, 1978-92 (Boston Phoenix, 1/06/09)

Whether it's the martial beat of Joy Division's "Transmission," the drudge rock of A Certain Ratio and Section 25, or the industro-sample ranting of Cabaret Voltaire, the whole Factory Records stereotype of thin, earnest men in long raincoats complaining about the cold and the damp to absolutely no chicks whatsoever over frenetic machine-made beats is with us for a reason.

But somewhere between 1978 and 1980 (or between disc one and disc two of this useful and illuminating compilation), something happened at Factory to loosen things up — whether in the E-damaged party insanity of Happy Mondays, the soaring and anthemic vision of New Order, or the baby-step bliss of (gasp) early James, you begin to hear young, uh, proud Brits having fun and consolidating an increasingly powerful new-wave æsthetic.

This particular collection is worthwhile not just for the single versions of the classics but for the way it shines light on the lesser lights of the Factory roster, from Crispy Ambulance's motorik mope punk to the languid romantic swing of the Railway Children to the worldbeat proto-glitch of Quando Quando. And the absence of American proto-electroclashers ESG (licensing issues are cited) is more than made up for by the one-song-on-each-disc spotlight glut of sad-sackers Durutti Column, who remained, from the beginning to the end of the Factory saga, the label's flagship act.