The Raveonettes: Pretty In Black : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Rock & roll's past is a living thing to singer-songwriter-guitarist Sune Rose Wagner. There was no mistaking his precise study and modern love of Buddy Holly balladry and the malt-shop noir of the Shangri-Las inside the hard rains of distortion on this Danish band's first two records. But clarity is the new extreme. Pretty in Black is virtually fuzz-free, highlighting the exquisite detail in the Raveonettes' gift for pastiche: the prowling, garage-surf guitars in "Love in a Trashcan"; the ghost dance of "Red Tan," wrapped in Phil Spector-style sleigh bells. Wagner's vocal interplay with Sharin Foo -- a dazzling spin on girl-group coo and the Gregorian-country blend of the Everly Brothers -- blooms in the desert echo of "Uncertain Times," a spaghetti-western take on Ben E. King's "Spanish Harlem." Cameos by Ronnie Spector, Suicide's Martin Rev and Maureen Tucker of the Velvet Underground affirm the purity of Wagner's vision. But there is nothing nostalgic about Foo's ice-angel poise in the futurist doo-wop of "Seductress of Burns" or the stiletto guitars piercing the heartbreak in "Somewhere in Texas" like poisoned arrows. Pretty in Black is history on the march.