The Ravonettes

I moved to New York City in November 2006 and like anyone who makes a move to Gotham, I made a beeline for old friends as soon as I got here. Amongst the oldest and closest I could call on were Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner. Even now, we still talk about that evening we all first met regularly. It was a freezing night just before Christmas 2002 in my hometown of Coventry, England. I was a 21 year old wannabe rock 'n' roll writer, still at university and mainly concerned with getting wasted, they were a wannabe rock 'n' roll band from Denmark, touring their first single 'Attack Of The Ghost Riders' and also mainly concerned with getting wasted. We got on very well funnily enough. That night, I was DJing between bands and they asked me to spin 'Dancing In The Streets' before they went on which I- as a long time Martha & The Vandellas lover- was only too happy to do. 45 minutes later, I looked at the other 15 people in the room with the expression of someone who had just been pistol-whipped by some of the darkest and noisiest pop music I'd heard in some time- and I saw the exact same expressions looking back at me.

Over the next four years, I'd see Sharin and Sune more than I see some of my family and it was thrilling to watch how more and more people took to them. The Mary-Chain-meets-Motown blasts of their debut EP 'Whip It On' in 2002 had no trouble finding a home in the hipster-heartland but when the first full length album 'Chain Gang Of Love' hit the shelves the following year, its lighter surf-pop shades helped The Raveonettes reach the broader audience they so clearly warranted. Whilst these two efforts clearly had the same monochromatic bloodline, 2005 'Pretty In Black' excised the noise and let the songs shine yet maintained the vintage dynamic that by now set them apart from virtually every contemporary guitar band. But being so unique amongst your peers can also leave you with a few problems and that's what I encountered barely two days after arriving in New York. Having spent the weekend looking at a succession of armpits and 'roach-motels (otherwise known as a typical NYC apartment hunt), I went around to Sune's place on a damp Sunday night and found him buried in a mountain of songs- most of which were pretty good. But at the same time, we both knew that they weren't good enough simply because they sounded just like The Raveonettes as the world already knew them.