Danish Rock Duo The Raveonettes
Denmark’s Finest Rip It Up at Toronto’s Opera House after SXSW
After cutting a swath through the legendary South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, the Raveonettes kicked things into overdrive for their Toronto tour stop.
There’s really only one way for a band to conquer the world these days: tour, tour, tour. The Raveonettes have certainly embraced that fact.
Over the 4 days of Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSE) festival, the Danish duo played a dozen shows. All that to build buzz within the industry. But the real work of building a fan base happens on the road, one city and one show at a time.
So the Raveonettes were back at it in front of a packed Opera House crowd in Toronto not a week later, winning new converts and convincing faithful followers to hang around.
Everly Brothers Meet Sonic Youth
How they do that is with a sound that can best be described as the Everly Brothers meets Sonic Youth, or maybe the Velvet Underground mashed together with the Stooges and the Ronnettes.
Songwriter Sune Rose Wagner underpins catchy pop melodies with washes of distorted, delayed, flanged and otherwise effects-treated guitars while he and partner Sharin Foo pretty them up with 60s girl group vocals. It’s an amazingly catchy mix.
Onstage, Wagner and Foo make a striking image. While Wagner, dressed in stovepipe jeans and t-shirt, looks like he’s badly in need of a sandwich, Foo is exactly the opposite. Tall and striking with a platinum pageboy, Foo looks every inch the rock Amazon in pumps and shimmering black and white dress.
Joined only by a drummer, who also triggered bass loops and other effects, the Raveonettes make a lot of noise for such a small set-up. And while Wagner and Foo are certainly capable of veering off into the sort of distorted sonic explorations you might expect from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon, the Raveonettes tend to keep their songs in the tried and true 3-minute range.
Still, there were plenty enough tunes to fill their hour-long set. Good songs like Love in a Trashcan, I Know That You Want the Candy and That Great Love Sound got slightly more extended workouts, but overall, the pace was fast and furious – the kind of set that wins fans if only for its exuberance.
Don't Try the Black Acid
Too bad the same can’t be said for openers Black Acid. Amp woes aside, this New York 5-piece couldn’t have looked or sounded more disinterested. Without real songs, catchy hooks or even a bit of enthusiasm beyond a particularly hard-working drummer, Black Acid could learn a thing or 2 from the headliners.
As for the Raveonettes, they’ll just keep working hard and acquiring fans one city and one gig at a time.
