No Cigar Magazine

Issue 7

Words and photography: Carey Q. Haider

Grand piano echoes entertain the California air composing harmonies of dread and despair as a pale frail figure sits behind keys battling depression. Each glass of wine washing away hell and the struggle within of writer’s block. Sunset Sound Studio in Hollywood, California, is the location of this romance. The Doors recorded here some fifty years previous, and today Sune Rose Wagner sits embalming a moment in time leaving every imperfection as a scar of brilliance. Sharin Foo, Sune’s bandmate and long time friend is here to help in the process and add the harmonizing layer that give it the soul that Richard and Joan once shared. The beauty of this outcome shall become The Raveonettes’ most compelling work to date, Observator. Flooding the record are dark sounds which steer the ship into the familiar harbors that the band has perfected, holding hands with a new friend; the piano. The penmanship which embodies the work, gives recognition to death of all things beautiful, and puts the listener six feet under in the deep dark hole that Sune sat in weeks previously on the shores of Venice Beach, hopeless and sinking with the sun. With writer’s block and inspiration feeling like an ex-lover, Sune began to find refuge in a numbing, sinking ship of Benzodiazepine among other substances.

Leaving the beach for the lights of Hollywood to start tracking an album would become the guiding light that would pull Sune out of defeat. With Sharin’s help they found hope in the last resort of spontaneity. The organic affair built on purple hearts blossomed into nine completed songs which were composed in a few weeks time; the fastest recording the band has made to date. Observator truly is a rose from the concrete.