At times, listening to this album feels like cheating on your long term loved one. You're one of those perpetual re-offenders, ditching your posh blonde in beige for a total lookalike. Look: everything that made you fall in love the first time is here. The just so fuzz, the dressing up box teenage delinquency, the sixties girl group melodies, expertly applied swathes of reverb. Only the name is different. The Raveonettes instead of The Jesus And Mary Chain.
The attention to detail is startling. You could almost believe that Sune Rose Wagner has gone through each Mary Chain album cataloguing particular stylistic flourishes. Here's the bassline from 'Taste Of Cindy', the guitar sound from 'Just Like Honey', that burst of white noise from 'Kill Surf City'. This isn't so much grand inspiration as a case of wholesale sampling. If this was a dance album, the royalty pay outs to Reid and Reid would be gargantuan.
And yet.
The Raveonettes have something the Mary Chain lost around the time of 'Automatic': an understanding of how to make a tight three minute pop song feel exhilarating. So, yes, while your identikit bit on the side may be a guilty pleasure, boy can they kiss. Just take the joyously perfect 'Heartbreak Stroll'. Simple swinging drumbeat kicks off on its own for the exact amount of bars, guitars step up a gear just when you want them to, the clap along guitar solo is irresistible, and the whole thing is over in less than three minutes. Sigh. Cigarette.
Fans will know that 'Chain Gang Of Love' is all in one key: b flat major rather than the b flat minor of the duo's debut. But while 'Whip On' was essentially the same song given a variety of treatments, like 'Run Lola Run' with a lush b-movie soundtrack, this album feels like a proper collection of songs. The upbeat, sun on your brain stormers ('The Great Love Sound', the aforementioned 'Heartbreak Stroll'), are paced alongside slower, more obviously romantic tunes. 'Remember' is gooey like melting ice cream on a Sunday best suit, while 'The Truth About Johnny' is an echo of fifties beat pop discovering heartbreak. This time the infatuation doesn't fade.
But then.
Part of you can't help wonder why, if Sune Rose Wagner is such an accomplished songwriter, clearly writing simple classics to a defined template as a kind of creative exercise, he doesn't apply that talent to something truly original. For no matter how much they breathlessly lead you astray, taking you by the hand into a field of poppies, laughing over their shoulder, bare feet a blur, you still find images of that original lover flashing into your mind. You want to howl "The Raveonettes!", but at the crucial moment the only name on your lips is "The Mary Chain!"
That can't be good for anybody's self esteem.
