Ali MacLean

Steeped in cool fuzz, the Raveonettes have modernized the fifties sound of the Raveonettes, in the same manner that David Lynch takes those nifty fifties family values and transplants them into the insidious, dark, seedy underbelly of the modern city.

The city of Los Angeles seemed to want to welcome the Danish duo on Saturday, and match their music with cool, cloudy, shoegaze weather. The show was at near capacity, bringing out a lot of lovesick lads who pressed up against the lip of the stage to hang on Sharin Foo’s every lilting syllable.

Dreamy, surf swells of feedback from Sune Rose Wagner’s strumming, echoed against the walls of the Fonda, with ‘Love In A Trashcan’ being a stand out. Many of the newer songs off their current LP, like ‘Lust’ are trance like ballads filled with twangy yearning. Punchy versions of ‘Attack Of The Ghost Rider’ and ‘Twilight’ picked up the pace a little bit, with a chugging beat that hearkened to their California cousins, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The final song of the evening was the stand out ‘Aly Walk With Me’, an electronic, Brill Building styled, slow jam which has strains of good old Garbage.

But this was a pared down show. To round out the duo’s sound, the Raveonettes employed Pity Party Julie Heisenflei on drums and picked up a femme fatale on back up guitar to round out the ‘Leader Of the Pack’ type gang. However the show was quick, straightforward, and pared down, with little banter between songs. All in all, the set seemed disappointingly short. Including the encore, it was over in a little under an hour…the time it takes to get crunked on a shot of absinthe, dream of Gauloises and girl gangs, and then sober up for the ride home.