Review: The Raveonettes, Oval Space.

Now fifteen years into a storied discography, their recordings stored in innumerable abodes and hard drives likewise worldwide, The Raveonettes somehow continue to contrive to position themselves somewhere ambiguous between the mysterious and the mystifying. Tonight at Oval Space, this is transparently reflected in the fact that Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner are bedevilled by (albeit nondescript) “technical difficulties,” with the pair therefore enshrouding themselves in a dense fug of fog and manically flickering strobes, rendering their every other movement completely imperceptible, while synchronously ensuring the allure of the enigma goes on, and on, and… Well, what else…

Ah, yes: the pairing’s renouncing conventional releases, without doing so in an interesting or, for that matter, innovative manner has made them out to seem even more of an anoraked curioso’s – of which many, among the Ipso Facto lookalikes waiting on G&Ts and taxis, mix and a-mingle – ignis fatuus. Nonetheless, it matters not when you’re making this kind of cold, bloody killing at the merchandise desk, a combination of ludicrous price structuring and those aforesaid strobes enough to make your eyes water and, later, wail for mercy. But ultimately, the prevailing impression is that – not only tonight, but so too continually – Foo and Wagner are failing to live up to their seemingly limitless potential.

Away from the smoke and nonliteral mirrors a moment, although a bold claim, In and Out of Control – their 2009 masterpiece; or mesterværk, to give their mother tongue a good ol’ waggle – went all the way toward corroborating the Phil Spector-esque promise encapsulated in the earlier likes of Chain Gang of Love and Pretty In Black, all Hal Blaine snares and snarling Jazzmaster refrains. Tonight, their want – or perhaps rather, their wont – to totally disregard said record (but for Oh, I Buried You Today as part of a cursory, even begrudging encore) is as bewildering as it is wildly disillusioning.

However, if you’d yet to glean their love of the illusory from these few paragraphs alone, it’s reflected in everything from the shiny sheen of Sharin’s hacksaw platinum bob, seen bobbing about whenever not painted black, to their faintly diversified pedal boards (widely lionised, and immortalised lithographically at that merch stall aforesaid), to the gauzy haze which swamps the stage. Their image is thus paramount to their various successes; The Raveonettes tantamount to an intoxicating cocktail of style and substance combined. But with relatively few hits aired, there are rather too many misses for tonight to be classed among those successes…

It’s an innately nostalgic affair, Foo remarking on their (reputedly involuntarily) pared-down performance harking back to “the good ol’ days,” in what is a rare moment’s interaction. And she’s not wrong, with more or less every last number coming from their early oughties outpouring: rattling through Somewhere In Texas and Railroad Tracks unaccompanied, the setlist is (if not exactly “special,” as Wagner may well suggest, then) especially spare in every sense of the word. For at a scant eleven songs long, from the skeletal psychedelia of (The Jesus and Mary) Chain Gang of Love or Love In a Trashcan, right through to the motorik, discothèque-type Kraut-out that is Aly, Walk With Me, no concessions are made for the mellifluous saccharinity of, say, Last Dance. I’m not suggesting they should’ve delved into In and Out of Control in the name of the (both nominally and sonically) questionable Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed), but that bit more variety would definitely not have gone amiss this evening. Regardless, on a night more likely to inspire epilepsy as opposed to the sort of dancing implied by the pairing’s apparently timeless moniker, whether the sound of The Raveonettes is still great or, for that matter, really loved really does remain to be seen, heard and so on.