I’ve been hoping for a breakthrough album from The Raveonettes for quite a while now. The bad news is that In And Out Of Control is not that album. The good news is that it’s a damn fine record anyways.
It’s a bit darker, more driven, than their mid-decade forays into a purer form of doo-wop. Most of the songs here buzz along at a fast clip and while the instrumentation certainly continues with the ‘wall of sound’ approach, it’s all far more self-contained. Which does not mean its restrained – when done well, the centrifugal force of containment holds everything together, compacts it, and produces a neutron star of buzzing pressure.
Album opener “Bang!” is about as good a song as they’ve ever made. And it conclusively proves once and for all where the true genius in this band lies: in their choruses. The rest of the song is nice enough, but the chorus, oh my the chorus. It hits you with all the force and glory of a hundred perfect summers, of a million songs about youthful abandon and true love.
The second track, “Gone Forever” doesn’t break new ground, but it offers a nice counterpoint to the exuberance of “Bang!” It’s a delightfully dark and stormy variation on their normal gauzy motif.
The third song in the opening trio is “Last Dance,” the lead single, which dials things down quite a bit. It owes quite a bit more to a classic 60s tune not just for inspiration but in style as well – though for once the highlight is not the chorus (as beautiful as the chorus is) but instead is that moment when they go all Mates of State about two and a half minutes in and let the keyboards take over.
Those three songs probably constitute the strongest portion of the record. They hit most of the crucial bases, and offer some moments of pure magic.
However, the single most powerful track on the record is undoubtably “Suicide” – which is easily the best work they’ve done to date. It’s dark and vicious but also a paean to the possibility of transcendence and beauty. It’s the moment of hope and belief that’s only possible in the midst of chaos and collapse. And, once again, it all comes to a head in a chorus that brings together all of that latent energy and releases it in one enormous burst: “Lick your lips and fuck suicide.” It’s one of the finest moments in music not just this year but any year.
Apart from those four tracks, they never quite manage to get the chemistry right. “Break Up Girls!” is too relentlessly linear and dark, and the same goes for “Heart of Stone.” On the other side “Wine” takes forever to get going and never manages to reach escape velocity, and “Oh, I Buried You Today” has the makings of something special but at only 1:22 is more a snippet than a full piece of work.
Finally, you can’t review this record without talking about two tracks. One is the rather obviously titled “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)” – which polarizes opinion for reasons that should be not difficult to grasp. Namely, the juxtaposition of an almost saccharine sound – replete with bubbly harmonies – and lines like “They rip you to shreds / Make you feel useless / You’ll never forget / Those fuckers stay in your head.” For me, it’s all a bit much. I think they could pull it off if they stuck to just the verses, but the constant repetition of “boys who rape should all be destroyed” makes the whole thing sound just a little bit too self-consciously precious for them to pull it off.
The other polarizing track is “D.R.U.G.S.” which dabbles in dance-rock, bringing almost a disco beat to bear. I can see people applauding the effort to branch out, but for me, it’s a major drag on the album, a notable and frustrating departure from the flow of the record. It also is one of the few moments when the general themes of the album (pain, suffering, drugs, and the seedy underworld) lose any of their depth. It’s a cliche (here’s our song about drugs!) without any substance to back it up – and thus detracts from other parts of the album that offer far more compelling shades of gray.
Still, even with a few songs that don’t quite work, and a second half that trails off quite a bit (“Suicide” notwithstanding), the energy and passion they bring to bear on the successful tracks suggest that The Raveonettes still may yet have that breakthrough album in the works.