The Raveonettes
Pe'ahi

The Raveonettes continue to not be the state of the art of shoegaze. However, none of us listens only to perfect, beautiful albums, acclaimed, with critical consensus and applause from the public; except, perhaps, for someone intellectually dishonest and somewhat sad. Therefore, this latest release from the Danish duo is also forgivable for its proud genre coarseness, especially because debts with Psychocandy seem almost definitively settled, and the Raveonettes have now become quite proficient at balancing influences without falling into slavish imitation.

The disappointment of listening to an album titled Pe'ahi without practically finding any trace of surf - neither big guitars like Dick Dale's (apart from a shadow in the coda of The Rains of May, a beautiful moment), nor new directions - and listening to a Raveonettes album that sounds quite different from the Raveonettes as we remembered, gives way to immediate surprise at the bossa trend of Endless Sleeper, with its arpeggios, its explosions, and with its panoramic lo-fi and emotional ending: a great first punch. It also gives way to surprising lyricism, when so far the lyrics have been more a necessity due to the singing; Mr. Wagner, Sune Rose's father, passed away last year, and his son threw himself into surfing and decided to write about it for Sharin Foo to sing everything (thankfully): thus Kill! tells about the time Sune saw Mr. Wagner f**king a red-haired w***e, Endless Sleeper about the time Sune almost drowned, and Summer Ends about the pain of loss. Whether you take it or not, all this represents a significant step forward.

But we will not listen to the Raveonettes for the lyrics; we will listen to them because they know how to make us dance and/or sleep with their Madchester-like stride immersed in the usual fuzz and chaos, which finds its peak in Kill! with its catchy baritone guitar line, or in the big track Sisters which marries Caribbean acoustic strums, flying carpets of guitar noise, music boxes, ethereal falsettos, incredibly inspired guitar phrases, and danceable syncopation to add to at least another couple of truly successful tracks to throw into a shoegaze compilation: these are more or less the ingredients. Best Raveonettes album so far: it won't change your life, but hey.