The Raveonettes will perform at Culture Room on April 1.
Photo by Ashlie and Amber Chavez
When you hear the beautiful wall of sound of the Raveonettes, complete with fuzzy guitars and driving bass, you don’t immediately think of the rolling hills of Tennessee, but that’s exactly where singer/guitarist Sune Rose Wagner now calls home. When he called New Times on a Monday morning, he said the small town outside Nashville, where he currently resides, couldn’t be more different from the isolated part of Denmark where he first got into music. “I started playing guitar and writing songs at 14. I borrowed books from the library to learn to play and started a local band to play music with friends.”
Those early bands included Western Front and Psyched Up Janis. In 1998, he had a vision for a different type of musical group. “I wanted a band that if I had to go out and see a concert, this is what I would want to see. I thought about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Shangri-Las, the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth. It seemed simple to me. Get the songwriting of the ’60s girl groups, take the noise and weirdness of Sonic Youth, and add vocal harmonies.”
With the help of bassist and singer Sharin Foo, the duo of the Raveonettes was born. In no time at all, but with a lot of initiative, Wagner said he and Foo knew they had a successful formula. “We wrote a tremendous amount of songs to test if the vision worked.”
Nowhere to this critic’s ear does the vision work as unforgettably as their 2003 debut LP Chain Gang of Love. They advertise on the cover one of the conditions the band foisted on itself, as all 13 songs are written and recorded in the key of B flat minor. “Working with limitations is good for a writer. It challenges you to be creative.” Other limitations they put on the record were no hi-hat drums, only cymbals, and that they could only use three chords. “How with all that can you make it interesting?”
Wagner says this disciplined structure was influenced by another artistic movement that emerged from Denmark around the same time as the Raveonettes, Dogme 95. Danish filmmakers like Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg put out a manifesto where shooting of movies must take place on location rather than a studio, the camera must be handheld, and music can only be heard if it’s part of the scene. The resulting Dogme 95 movies, like The Idiots and Mifune’s Last Song, really influenced the Raveonettes and still influence Wagner greatly. “Most Danish artists are inspired by it. How can it not? All the Dogme movies are classics.”
That excitement over creativity helped spur the Raveonettes to release nine more records over the last couple of decades. It can be overwhelming for new listeners to know where to start. Wagner gives a quick primer. “If you like garage rock and do-it-yourself sound, go to the first two albums (Chain Gang of Love and Pretty in Black). If you like more introverted shoegaze and dreamy sounds, try Raven in the Grave. If you want something really monumental and huge, try the two Pe’ahi albums.”
There will soon be more Raveonettes music as well. Although the sound and restrictions placed on the new music are still being formed at the time of the interview.
But the most exciting news for South Florida Raveonettes fans is that the current three-piece iteration of the band will be playing their first local show in 20 years on April 1 at Culture Room, followed by a performance at the Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise on April 6. “It’ll be a loud, noisy intimate experience. You should have your mind blown,” Wagner says.
The Raveonettes. With Astari Nite. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, at Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale; cultureroom.net. Tickets cost $40.85 via ticketmaster.com.
The Raveonettes. With the Sonics, Low Cut Connie, the Dollyrots, and others. Monday, April 6, at Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise; undergroundgaragecruise.com. Tickets from $1,525 via sixthman.net.