The Raveonettes

Add Date: September 11 

Artist: The Raveonettes 

Album: Observator 

Label: Vice 

Genre: Rock, pop 

Comments: The Raveonettes have made no secret of their love for The Velvet Underground and The Jesus & Mary Chain, and those influences are still prevalent on Observator, the duo's fourth LP in five years. Yet Sune Rose Wagner has started to become an in-demand guy for mixing and producing, working on recent records by Eternal Summers and Dum Dum Girls, among others, and it seems plausible that these acts have rubbed off a bit on The Raveonettes' sound. And while the '60s pop undertones that mark their latest album are nothing new for the band, it's almost like they've been rediscovered after the release of the New Wave-leaning In and Out of Control (2009) and last year's shoegaze rock-heavy Raven in the Grave.

Girl-group harmonies aside, though, Observator is rather dark--and this for what is, in fact, The Raveonettes' California album. Wagner and his bandmate Sharin Foo, natives of Denmark who currently call New York home, headed out west, expecting to find lots of sunshine and happiness, but things didn't quite work out as planned. "What I found, however, was quite the opposite," Wagner said. "I found dread and despair in L.A., a wicked loneliness..."

That melancholy slant serves The Raveonettes well on this excellent LP. Start with tracks 6, 2, 7, 3 and 9.