I Dropped My Lollipop in the Dirt

Lust Lust Lust - The Raveonettes 8.5/10

I admit to being smitten with noise, fuzz, crunch and feedback. But as in all things, there are ways to do it well and ways to do it poorly. The Raveonettes do it well, very well. Sometimes dreamy and sometimes steamy boy/girl vocals mostly about... well, lust... float above or trade the spotlight with crashing noise and fuzzed out guitars. But it isn't just noise for noise's sake. Here the washes and walls of feedback propel the melody and provide the tension to raise the pretty and sometimes silly lyrics to the level of an immediate emotional rush.

You Want the Candy sums up the direction of most of the album. The pop/noise mix makes the comparison to Jesus and Mary Chain apt, but if the Reids were dipping in The Beach Boys' lyrical well, The Raveonettes have gone straight to The Archies. But it bops and pops and the fuzz dirties everything up until the whole thing sounds sexy as hell.

The other tracks are perhaps less "bubblegum gone bad", but this isn't an album to listen to for its searing lyrical insights. Aly Walk With Me succeeds as a droning love song to a real or imagined absent lover with heartbreaking, if somewhat ear-shattering, feedback playing off sad-sack vocals. Dead Sound is the heaviest on lyrical content, but its charm lies mostly in pretty harmonies and echoing bright guitars and keyboards juxtaposed with walls of fuzz and static, finally all crashing in on each other.

Blitzed draws more from some secret cache of surf pop that several bands seem to be tapping into lately. While perhaps not a standout track, the simple little riff that lays its foundation is enough to make you feel nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. Sad Transmission is underlaid with a teched out hand-clapped beat that would have felt at home in a 1963 girl group release. In fact, almost every track is some kind of reference to something that is in your musical subconscious or even conscious. Not just J&MC, but stuff from The Ronettes to Velvet Underground to Suicide to your favorite trip-hop to some forgotten film noir soundtrack. But Lust Lust Lust doesn't really sound derivative.

It sounds like dirty fun.