Brighton's best...
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The Ravonettes...
review A suitably dark, windswept and sinister night on the seafront bodes very well for tonight’s visitation from Scandinavian psycho-killer rockers, The Ravonettes - bumping us off with a snappy little support slot from sparky, jumped up little post-pop monkeys, Razorlight (very retro, part Buzzcocks - part Libertines). We skulk about in the shadows with a rather better looking than usual Concorde crowd. Lots of 50's references, horn-rimmed glasses and pinched in waists... It looks a bit like one of those house parties in Gary Larson's 'Far Side’ drawings.We are deftly seduced by the intro tape: Dusty Springfield and 'Wall of Sound' Spector-esque girl groups (and look what happened to him, yeah!) and excited by the most professional and expensive looking stage set-up I've seen in a while. Good drums, four mikes (for a duo?) and everything held together with an Apple Titanium Powerbook in the background topped off with some very expensive looking lighting and far too much dry ice for my poor old lungs. The natives are very, very restless! I'd been looking forward to this for weeks. I really like The Ravonettes. I like the sound, I like the way they sing and play, I love the videos and the twisted sinister references and dark humour. I like the unashamed referencing to the past and I just think they are funny! But that's not what we had tonight. Sure, they did good. Skulked on stage, lots of sluggish attitude and hunched shoulders... but no charisma, which is the one thing I had expected. It doesn't help that they had tried too hard to duplicate recorded sound, they even had handclaps and complex percussion programmed into the computer - and when the laptop packed in during the third song (nobody noticed – honest…) it nearly ended in tears. The interesting thing about these two is that, individually their voices are weak but together. Perfectly matched and sublime. We didn’t need all that dressing. The drummer was great and the guitar work fantastic, but something a little more raw and relaxed would have been far better. I was expecting to see more guts, more balls and more beef. This was just a little bit too polished for me. There wasn't any attempt to communicate that carefully crafted image. No biting humour, no dark imagination, nothing - all a bit dull. A back projection and a few set pieces would have tied the whole thing together nicely, otherwise it all seems a bit... same-ish. I moved to the back after a few songs (well the crowd wasn’t exactly jumping) and got myself a beer. I wasn't alone. A few people had already started to get their coats. What a pity. Might have been an off night, or it might just have been me 'cos they really are great. If you get the chance, check out the music on either ‘The Chain Gang Of Love’ or “ Whip It On” and give yourself five minutes to scan through www.theravonettes.com and get a little taste of what they are REALLY all about. B - for effort, they made it look a little bit too easy C + for presentation, could try harder A - for vocal performance, holding their own here A + for lighting, now that’s what I call strobes
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