Last Monday, when everyone and his pet chimp was watching the Wacko Jacko shockumentary I went to see Danish duo The Raveonettes at the Little Civic in Wolverhampton.

It was clear straight away that this was a slightly unusual evening for the LC. Whispers of 'sellout' in the bar was followed by a massive queue to get in, and a glammed-up heavily made-up crowd it was too. Some of the girls had made an effort as well, including the kohl-faced Gaye Advert lookalike in fishnet stockings directly in front of me. Even the new barmaid was a statuesque beauty, although perhaps she was taking the 'statuesque' bit a little too literally (noticeably only the girls at the bar were complaining).

First up were a band called (I think) One Eye's Blue, whose competent pub-rock take on alt.country was listenable enough and drew polite applause, but failed to convince either themselves or us exactly what they were doing on this particular bill.

There was a little more anticipation for the next band on, Manchester's Nylon Pylon who are highly-rated in some quarters. Societies for the hard-of-hearing, one assumes, since their take on that most ghastly of genres (indie-dance) had them sounding like Pop Will Eat Itself without the humour or the choons.

The lead singer had a mullet, danced like yer uncle and pointed upwards at various intervals for no apparent reason; one of his colleagues wore a tracksuit top and had a haircut somewhere between the two Savages (Lily and Robbie); the other guitarist wore an anorak and I really couldn't be arsed to see what their drummer looked like.

Summing up everything that has been awful in indie music over the last 15 years in 20 minutes, Nylon Pylon seemed to have been too busy scoring drugs to have bothered with a soundcheck. They stunk and seemed to know it. I've known space shuttles go down better. Their brand of council estate skag chic was exactly what the Raveonettes crowd, all gothed-up to the nines, had come to escape.

It was shaping up at this stage to be an unpromising evening, then. Denmark's great hopes The Raveonettes have had their fair share of hype but a certain amount of backlash already - are they one Scandinavian band or boy/girl combo too many?

First up, I have to say my scepticism regarding talk of Sharin Foo as the natural heir to Debbie Harry's ice queen blonde icon was unfounded. In the flesh she does have an incredible allure and you just can't keep your eyes off her, and live her vocals are much more to the forefront than on their debut mini-album Whip It On, so their songs sound even more like offcuts from 'Isn't Anything' by MBV hijacked by Cramps riffs. Which is fine by me, quite frankly, and despite the short length of the songs it's mesmeric stuff and for forty minutes it feels like you're in a David Lynch movie (but without, perhaps fortunately, Dennis Hopper breathing down your neck).

Who knows whether The Raveonettes are here for the long run, but for 'Attack Of The Ghost Riders' alone they're worthy of the attention they're getting in the here and now. And for my money they are making tunes that are more distinctive, atmospheric and organic than the likes of BRMC from very similar influences. So for me, Whip It On is all it's cracked up to be.