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The Raccoons @ Retox Lounge 05/09/08 |
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Wednesday, May 14 2008 |
THE RACCOONS
The Retox Lounge
May 9, 2008
 The Raccoons filled the basement room of the Retox Lounge Friday night with warm swirling melodies and gently pulsing electronic drum beats. The cozy audience and band were wrapped up together in the cocoon they wove of breezy electronic rock music. Still reeling from a nightmarish hangover that day, I indulged in a few precious moments of eyes-closed swooning back and forth. When they launched into their cover of Cory Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” I felt sure that the Raccoons’ and I had entered a dream together and were floating away.
Their three-person lineup features Nick Stone’s rich, down-tempo croon washing across the audience like a lullaby sung by Scott Walker. Nick accompanies himself with crystalline shimmering chords on his twelve string electric, strumming songs that sound like Syd Barrett or a bleak take on the Beatles. Stefan Wicks helps out with backing vocals and splits his left and right hands between a couple different synthesizers, supplying a soft mossy low end analog rumble under sparkling right hand melodies. Jeremy Rosenblum adds textures and propulsion to the tunes alternating between guitar, bass, and drums.
The Retox has a neighborhood-bar feel to it and a pretty cool basement music room that’s probably better suited to punk rock than the Raccoon’s multi-layered orchestral pop. But they made the most of the environment and maintained a sense of humor. Midway through the set, when the club’s sound guy couldn’t be found, Stefan asked, “are there any sound engineers in the room who could help us?” and it made me feel like we were all part of the group.
[Jeff Bissell]
[STREAM] The Raccoons: Various Tracks
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