Short Biography
THE RAVEONETTES BIO 2009
(by Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes)
It is incredibly hard being in a Danish rock ‘n' roll band ‘cause of this damn thing we have called "Jante Loven" which basically tells us Danes not to feel superior to any other man, woman, child or beast. This translates into everyone being very scared of thinking highly of themselves and in the music world means that we're no better than this band or that band...Bulls**t!!! is what Sharin and I said and turned our backs on the Danish kingdom. Don't get me wrong. We love Denmark, but we felt we had to leave in order to break the restricting chains of the Jante Law. But before we left, we hit up the Ministry of Culture for a couple of bucks in state sponsored tour support, called up Hilly Kristal and landed our first ever gig outside Denmark in the filthy and disgusting legendary club known as CBGB's. David Fricke showed up along with 40 other paid admissions and the rest is pure rock ‘n' roll history...
Well, not quite. If there ever was a buzz band, The Raveonettes were it! Let me tell you, from the time Don Lenner, the president of Columbia, asked me to play Bob Dylan's old guitar for him and his posse, to the time I shook David Letterman's hand on national television, the expectations were on so high you wouldn't believe it. At that time we had only released an 8-track EP entitled Whip It On and a noisy, low-fidelity album called Chain Gang Of Love. By the time we released our final album for Columbia, Pretty In Black, the commercial success train had pretty much already derailed and we were excited and happy to move on from there...
We didn't sell millions of albums and we didn't become an arena packing band. I could have predicted that. I used to laugh about how people were so disappointed that we didn't become the next U2. What the hell were they thinking...
We spent the next 2 years coming up with the sound and songs for Lust Lust Lust which was recorded in my apartment in NYC. That album ended up out-selling our Columbia releases and was the darkest album we ever made.
We always hated repeating ourselves so we set the bar really high for our new album In And Out Of Control. We went to Copenhagen to record in a "real" recording studio with a genuine songwriter/producer and ended up spending a hell of a lot of our own money and an incredible amount of time. For 2 months we struggled with our producer who only worked 5-6 hours a day and took weekends off. Sharin and I ended up spending 15 grueling hours a day alone in the studio trying to figure out what we even wanted this album to be like.
It felt like it took forever to find the sound on this album and all the songs were so different from each other which made it even harder. We started treating each song individually instead of finding a common thread for the entire album.
It's a strange mixture of modern and old, dark and happy. It's about rape, violence, lost love, suicide, not giving a sh*t about what other people think of you and most importantly, being mad and angelic! "Jante Loven" doesn't mean sh*t to us ‘cause we know we made a better album than anybody else out there!!!
X Sune
In-depth Biography
Combining the noisy swells of the Jesus and Mary Chain with melodic elements of '50s rock & roll, the Raveonettes formed in Copenhagen during the early 2000s. Guitarist Sune Rose Wagner had tried assembling a band for several years, traveling between New York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and an island outside of Seattle in his search for like-minded musicians. A longtime fan of Bob Dylan, he also prized the songwriting of Buddy Holly, the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, and the guitar work of Mark Knopfler, although it was the lovely dissonance of Sonic Youth and the Jesus and Mary Chain that ultimately motivated Wagner to pursue music professionally. Alas, his stay in America didn't exactly pan out, and Wagner returned to Denmark, where he connected with bassist/vocalist Sharin Foo. A fan of the Beatles and the Velvet Underground, Foo had also studied qawwali and Hindustani classical music during a six-month stay abroad. She had also spent some time performing in Copenhagen's local venues.
Once formed, the Raveonettes created a set of rules that governed the creation of their first album. The project would be recorded entirely in B-flat minor, surrounded by only three chords, and each song had to be less than three minutes long. Ride cymbals were not allowed, either. What resulted from those unconventional specifications was a fuzzy, dark, cinematic set of songs entitled Whip It On, which fused classic garage rumblings with frenzied electronic bits. Whip It On was released in Europe in summer 2002 courtesy of Crunchy Frog; one month later, the Raveonettes waltzed into N.Y.C.'s CBGB for an American introduction. Producer Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, Joan Armatrading, the Go-Go's) caught the performance and enlisted as the producer for the group's next album. A deal with Columbia Records followed before the year's end, positioning the Raveonettes as Copenhagen's most promising export.
The Chain Gang of Love appeared in September 2003. The first single from the album, "That Great Love Sound," became a minor hit, due in part to a creepy video featuring Foo and Wagner dreaming up ways to kill each other. Sessions for their next album began in late 2004, and Wagner cast aside all songwriting and recording rules (as well as guitar distortion) in favor of classic songcraft and lots of rich, lush reverb. The resulting album, 2005's Pretty in Black, featured guest spots from Suicide's Martin Rev, Ronnie Spector, and the Velvet Underground's Moe Tucker. In early 2008, the band returned to a minimalist sound with Lust Lust Lust, followed one year later by In and Out of Control. The band's fifth studio album, Raven in the Grave, featured the single "Forget That You're Young" and was released in April of 2011. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, Rovi
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