Raven In The Grave...Rave On!

I just picked up the Raveonettes' latest disk, Raven In The Grave. Two words: love it! Of course, I'm not surprised. I had heard about half of the songs on WRUW over the past month or so and really enjoyed them.

If I were still doing music reviews, I would rate this an A+. To me, it's simply a great album. Disclaimer: I'm a big fan of songs with distorted guitars and dreamy, hard-to-decipher lyrics, all mixed together in a wash of sound. In other words, the shoegazer genre; Lush was my favorite band from the 90s.

But this is no exercise in "nu gaze" music-by-the-numbers. I immediately was struck by the musical, lyrical, thematic, and sonic range across Raven's nine tracks

Do you want fuzzy guitars and a driving beat? The album leads off with "Recharge & Revolt," an anthem to fighting (literally) for your love. As an aside, I have to admit that when I initially heard the tune's opening power chord, my musician's ear flashed back to the Raveonettes' 2003 release, Chain Gang Of Love, which bears the cover note "Recorded In Bb Major." And they weren't kidding...it's all in Bb. I'm happy to report that even though this disk has its fair share of songs in that key, they do use other chords as well.  :)

Do you want tender? How about "Forget That You're Young," which breaks down a relationship, start to end, using a string of simple monosyllabic verbs:

And I see

         chase

         meet

         get

         hold

         kiss

         need

         please

         hurt

         scare

         leave

         miss you, and I forget that you're young.

Do you want to drift off and dream? Then cue up "My Time's Up," the best sleepy-time song this side of Julee Cruise.

My personal favorite tracks are "Apparitions," with its hollow, nearly amelodic vocal, the lyrically spartan "War In Heaven" (which I would bet money started life as a work of poetry), and the aforementioned "Forget That You're Young." The latter is one of those songs that I could listen to, then hit the << button and listen to again. Who am I kidding? That's what I do.

In conclusion, two more words: buy it. Or "download it," since as I write this, Amazon is offering the MP3 for half price, which includes a bonus track.

"When I Fell From The Sky"

     When I Fell From The Sky

     When I fell from the sky

     I closed my eyes,

     And simply let my life pass by.

     The good,

     The bad,

     The in-between.

     Would I wake up?

     Was it a dream?

     I was light.

     A shiny plane?

     A kite?

     No wait...a drop of rain!

     Heaven2Ocean.

     River to shore.

     A cup scooped up and carried to pour

     And quench the thirst of a fledgling tree.

     To leaf,

     To Earth,

     Then back to sea.

     To sky,

     To cloud.

     Then plunge.

     Splash!

     Lake.

     I rose once more then fell awake.

Like I said, the muse is in the house. The meter of this poem is basically the same as yesterday's. Perhaps she'll change things up tomorrow.

I conceived of this song while listening to "Let Me On Out" from the Raveonettes Raven In The Grave. (BTW, great album. I think I'll talk about it in a future post.) Sometimes when I listen to a song, I hear other words. Not in the delusional, schizophrenic sense, of course. My mind just goes off on little journey and crafts something similar.  In this case, the lyric was "And how we fell apart." So "how" became "when" and "apart" became "the sky." Not exactly a long journey. Also, the song "Forget You're Young," from the same album, has the lyric, "Can I fall away now?" which led me to the final words of the poem.