MOG

Not so long ago I lamented the Magnetic Fields' utter failure to channel the Jesus and Mary Chain despite trying their hardest on "Distortion." Now here come the Raveonettes with their own attempt, and it's much more successful. Loud, distorted, reverberating, and alternately sultry and sunny. The key is to add the element of danger, something the MF are far too wry to manage.

"Aly Walk With Me," the lead-off single, gets about as close to "Sugar Ray" as needs to be gotten, with a devastating backbeat and purring vocals that pretty much guarantee the listener will walk with her, whatever their name is and whichever damn city she happens to be in. Fuzzed guitar bursts in periodically to deliver jagged chunks of bottle glass, apparently played on strings made out of power cables.

But it needs to be pointed out, amid all the reviews about this album resurrecting J&MC, or even My Bloody Valentine, that this is not a return to shoegaze. Listen to Film School, or Methodrone, for that sort of swirling, only vaguely melodic feedback haze. This is sweet sixties pop put together, bubblegum melodies intact, by frustrated dentists and those people who run the emergency broadcast network. It works about half the time.

Sune Rose Wagner's much-admired minimalist guitar approach is just right in its blistered intensity, song by song. But it can be hard to distinguish one song from the next when you try to make it through 10 or 15 in a row. It doesn't help that they decided to use nearly identical bass and drums on all the songs. They're all drowned in oceans of reverb - something I thought I could never get enough after Galaxie 500. But here it's like the drums are coated in snot.

Bottom line: Play the first half of this album. Loud. Then listen to the second half of Honey's Dead.