The Raveonettes at Monk Club, Rome (December 10, 2025)

The Raveonettes at Monk Club (Dec 10, 2025)

1. Blackest
2. Killer
3. Speed
4. That Great Love Sound
5. Red Tan
6. Sleepwalking
7. Love in a Trashcan
8. You Say You Lie
9. Attack of the Ghost Riders
10. Veronica Fever
11. My Tornado
12. Hallucinations
13. Dead Sound
14. Endless Sleeper
15. Sisters
16. Strange
17. Venus in Furs (The Velvet Underground cover)
18. Aly, Walk With Me
    — Encore —
19. The Christmas Song
20. Last Dance
21. I Wanna Be Adored (The Stone Roses cover)

It’s been twenty years since Pretty in Black, the second album by Raveonettes. Meanwhile, the Danish band has slipped seven more, despite the fact that at one point they had declared that they did not want to publish more (fans of Bon Iver, do not give up). What better time, then, to celebrate this anniversary? Or rather, use it as a pretext to get back on track because even if the occasion is obvious, the tour is not a celebratory operation. Of course, Pretty in Black emerges here and there, but the set of their concert draws without savings from a catalog that now tells almost a quarter of a century of career.

For this round, the Danish duo composed by Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo, both on guitar, is flanked only by Jakob Hoyer on drums (just enough to strengthen their beautiful thick and enveloping sound). No opening bands and start strong right away. The attack is with “Blackest”, dark in name, mood and even more in enlightenment (or in the almost total absence of it). A magnetic opening, seductive, that immediately bewitches the hall and opens the way to “Killer” and “Speed”, a trio that draws from the most recent PE’HAI II. From there the almost two-hour set continues to dig into the discography, alternating essential songs and fan favorites (“Aly, Walk With Me,” “Dead Sound” and “Love in a Trashcan”) to others who often come and go from their live (“Veronica Fever,” “Hallucinations”).

The Raveonettes live on declared appeals, with an aesthetic between the noise of Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine and the retro rock of the Kinks and Everly Brothers. But the references almost never run out and right in that game of references that the band hits in closing. First with a cover of “Venus in Furs” by the Velvet Underground, remade in full style, and shortly after with a last tribute, this time more faithful and direct, to the Stone Roses with “I Wanna Be Adored” in tribute to the bassist “Mani”, who died recently.

The heart of their live remains the chemistry between Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner, but what is really striking is their sound, a calibrated minimalism that with a few chords and mountains of reverberations transforms the simple into pure hypnosis. The guitars widen, the words filter through the cracks of the sound wall and the tunes that begin in a whisper end up exploding in effect and distortions. In short, you inevitably end up overwhelmed by a solid performance, timeless and, above all, high volume.