In And Out Of Control

We Say...

Review by Dan Weiss

Kind of heartwarming to see this perennial concept band come into their own. After seven years of minimalist gimmicks — like whole albums in B-flat, hip guests (Mo Tucker, and of course, Ronnie Spector) and other repetitive Psychocandy fuzz that smacked of affectation — last year's Lust Lust Lust set the stage for more tuneful things to come, like the sparkling, nursery-ready "Dead Sound." Here, Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo enter their rebellious phase: "Suicide," "D.R.U.G.S.," "Breaking into Cars." Finally putting flesh-to-bone songwise, they really bring the candy this time, starting — literally — with a "Bang!" with its hey-you-kids-gather-round shimmer, and carrying the energy through the assertively crunchy "Gone Forever" and the soaring "Last Dance." After the knockout rush of those first four songs, the rest takes longer to sink in. Let them.

The lyrics put a face on the Raveonettes' borrowed sonics, being mostly tropes about mischief or loss, the latter of which creates quite the dynamic stretch from "Gone Forever"'s haunted summer to "Last Dance"'s last dance to song-of-the-year candidate "Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)."

The group's understatement in categorizing rape as casually as any other pop disappointment ("those fuckers stay in your head") is darkly hilarious, but the song doesn't downplay the gut-wrenching reality either. And if the universality of its bubbly catchiness isn't personal enough for you, the nicely open-ended declarative "destroy" lets you imagine your own satisfying retribution scenario. That "Oh, I Buried You Today" soon follows is merely a suggestion.