{grate 4.5} It might seem a little excessive, not to mention repetitive,
for Scandinavian duo the Raveonettes to list lust three times on their fourth
LP, but it proves every bit an indicator of the excitement inside. It’s a rush
to hear a killer tune, but even more so when you realize that the band has
stumbled upon a solid combination of style and musical cohesiveness.

Where past efforts like Chain Gang of Love and Pretty in
Black were stunted and uneven, Lust Lust Lust is a true album in the finest
sense, working both track-by-track and as a complete body of work. Certain
circles dismissed Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo’s ominous, wall-of-sound
spectacle as a knockoff of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s nostalgia for darkly
glossed pop-rock. Now they have to place the band as the rightful heirs to the
throne.

After bursting through the doors with “Aly, Walk With Me” —
an edgy, sunglasses-cool tune befitting certain slow-motion walks in film — the
band heads into familiar, if somewhat more controlled territory with
“Hallucinations” and the magnetically catchy “Dead Sound.” And the surefire
stamp of the Raveonettes’ tunesmith blossoming: the ability to maintain the
same foreboding sweetness with heavy reverb and still keep each song a
distinguishable necessity. The duo flips between a more low-down, bubblegum
walk on “Black Satin,” sugar-rushed pop on “You Want the Candy” and the
triumphal blasts of standout “Blitzed,” coated in simple Duane Eddy-styled
guitar chords, which soak you in sweeping, divine epiphany.

The album is revelatory — manic and peaceful, balancing
gloomy, suicidal depression with a wide-eyed smile at transcendent beauty, like
standing on your street in the winter’s midnight fog, staring at the afterglow
of a car’s high beams just about to curve around the bend.