Lust Lust Lust is best heard loud loud loud. At a medium volume, it loses vitality. Any lower and it's a complete waste of time. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo's twisted update on early rock riffs and Jesus & Mary Chain distortion was built for intensity, and when cranked up to speaker-rattling levels, that agenda is clear. Granted, any album would gain new (and not necessarily pleasing) power at exaggerated volumes, but Lust Lust Lust sounds specifically engineered for eardrum-exploding impact. The few instruments-- guitar, drums, bass, guitar, synths, vocals, and guitar-- all bleed together into an aggressively trebly jangle, Wagner's riffs and waves of distortion washing over you like a bad trip.

Lust Lust Lust is the Raveonettes' third full-length, and on first spin, it might sound like a step backwards. Their previous effort, 2005's Pretty in Black, was a look-at-me effort that scrubbed the grime off their past work and expanded the duo into a full band with guests like Mo Tucker and Ronnie Spector. But it also proved the Raveonettes don't clean up very well; they're most presentable when they're not presentable, so the return to distortion is a welcome regression.

Lust Lust Lust relies less heavily on the early-rock influences that informed the 2002 EP Whip It On! and 2003's Chain Gang of Love, as the Raveonettes have learned to better integrate them into a fuller arsenal of sounds. Opener "Aly Walk With Me" is the record's best argument for maximum volume. Over a coldly steady heartbreak-stroll drumbeat, Wagner and Foo chant verses between eruptions of scalding guitar distortion. "Aly, walk with me in my dreams/ All through the night," they sing in dead-eyed harmony. Part wet-dream manifesto, part invocation to a soiled muse, the track makes an ideal introduction into the gutter world of Lust Lust Lust, where Foo's gauzy vocals rise out of the din and where desire can seriously fuck with your color registration. 

What makes the Raveonettes so compelling-- and what elevates their nostalgia above pure gimmickry-- is their refusal to separate sex from drugs from rock'n'roll. They're all the same sin, and all worthy of the same distortion. "You Want the Candy" disguises its sordidness ("tastes so sweet makes good love bad") with sugary pop hooks that might have you believe Wagner means "candy" literally. The Raveonettes usually sound best when they play fast: "Blush", "Dead Sound", and "Blitzed" rush by on Foo's shoegaze/girl-group vocals, synths that sparkle like stars over slums, and Wagner's back-alley Silvertone approximation, quickening the pace as they convey barely contained excitement of some dark need. But slower songs like "Expelled From Love" and "Sad Transmission" allow Wagner to play around a little more, crafting pulsing beats from a drum machine or a guitar and translating old styles into new contexts.

In the past, Wagner has held himself to certain restrictions as a means of sonically defining a release: On Whip It On! the Raveonettes played all their songs in the key of B-flat minor using only three chords. For Chain Gang of Love, they switched to B-flat major. On Lust Lust Lust, there are no stated restrictions, just the unavoidable limitations of one guy playing only a few instruments. Wagner can only get so many sounds out of this array, so even at 12 well-sequenced tracks (14 counting the U.S. edition's two bonus tracks), the album occasionally seems overlong and repetitive, not because the songs are weak but because not every one of them shows us something new. A case could be made that this musical dynamic mirrors the machinations of desire, as Lust Lust Lust details the many ways that good love can grow stale, with or without new things to want. But really, for the most part these shortcomings can be drowned out with sheer volume.