The Raveonettes
Wishing You a Rave Christmas
Rating: 3.0
Label: Vice Records
Don’t believe the hype, kids. You may not know it from the phosphorescent streets and the happy-go-lucky kiddies, but Christmas can be a bit of a bummer. As December 25th approaches, if you find yourself lonely or broke or both, any sign of Christmas—jaunty carols, store-bought foliage, men in red velvet suits—is just another dagger through your already hardening, cholesterol-clogged heart.
And who feels your pain this time of year? Your loan officer? Charles Dickens? That ex who stopped returning your calls back in June? The Messiah that Christmas supposedly honors? Fatter-than-Santa chance! Nope, it’s musicians who have, for over a century, cast a skeptical eye toward forced holiday gaiety, and provided voices, outlets, commiseration for the hapless souls who just can’t lift their spirits to superhuman levels. From WWII-era standards like “Blue Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” to rock-era classics like “Someday at Christmas,” “Father Christmas” and “2000 Miles,” woe permeates a surprising chunk of our most treasured holiday songs.
Take, for example, the immortal “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”, a deceptively breezy lament originally recorded by Darlene Love, featured on Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You, and since covered by everyone from U2 to Hanson. Fittingly, the Raveonettes open their somber Christmas EP with a downtempo take on this number, drunk on heartbreak and buzzsaw synths. Three woozy, spooky originals follow, but none lighten the mood. This is a Christmas album for depressed, solitary sad-sacks, whose every word trembles like Sune Rose Wagner’s falsetto, who pine for a Sharin Foo to harmonize their holidays away, whose trains of thought screech against tracks of feedback.
Here, as on the Raveonettes’ less seasonal output, Spector’s influence looms large. Sleigh-bells and xylophones hang themselves upon a fuzzy, droning wall of sound, a suitable backdrop for delicate melodies, delivered in faint, almost whispery vocals. Frankly, any of these songs could have originated in 1963: “Christmas Ghosts” is a gorgeous, yearning lullaby that aches like a solitary man under the mistletoe, and “Come on Santa” has an almost folky lilt beneath sheets of surf-guitar reverb.
At four songs in 18 minutes though, Wishing You a Rave Christmas can’t help but feel slight, a nifty EP, conceptually coherent (man, what a dark, lonely Christmas), but far from a powerful statement. In fact, like most EPs (including the three previous Raveonettes EPs in this four-part series), it’s pretty ephemeral; it’s tough to imagine digging this one out even when next Christmas rolls around—it’ll lose hard-drive space to whatever bands release holiday EP’s at the close of 2009. The strength of the songs, miles removed from the duo’s best, doesn’t help; “Ghosts” and “Christmas in Cleveland” drone on too long, dragging good ideas two minutes past their shelf life. “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is the durable gold standard here, both the best song and the best performance, and its timelessness highlights the heart and focus the other songs lack.
A Rave Christmas is like a hollow Christmas greeting or a cheapo Secret Santa gift: nice but negligible, unobtrusive and captivating but probably will not dent your Christmas-time consciousness positively or negatively, unlikely to become a holiday tradition instead of a holiday curiosity. But it’s an inexpensive addition to this year’s Christmas playlist, and its sleepy, trippy, haunting take on this holiday season is an apropos complement to these recession-strained times.
by Charles A. Hohman
