| Crystal Castles debut album: Try To Sing Along, I Dare You. |
| Updated: Friday, 05 September 2008 | ||
 Yeah sure, American Idol is alright, but what about the bad singers? Like it or not, it’s the bad, or rather, unconventional singers that make the world go ‘round. Where would we be without Mick Jones’s quavering tenor? Or how about Joey Ramone’s shouty, monotonous drone? Gordan Gano’s quivering falsetto can be called unorthodox, at best, to say nothing of the tuneless cacophony of Johnny Rotten. The point is this—music, especially punk music, could not survive without bad singers.
Crystal Castles’ Alice Glass is no exception. On the band’s self-titled debut album, the petite, twenty-year-old Torontonian screams, wails, moans and rasps through sixteen of some of the strangest, most utterly quixotic (not to mention irritating) songs ever to have been performed (successfully, at least). In fact, Glass, along with Ethan Kath (the technical part of the duo) creates a brand of techno/noise rock ‘thrash’ according to their Myspace, but I imagine this label was chosen for the same reasons that dance and pop groups prefer to call themselves indie rock: it appeals to the masses, and doesn’t require a lot of speculation. If mileage logged is a valid measure of success, the duo is definitely on the right track; Crystal Castles’ tour schedule lists everywhere from Osaka, Japan to London, England, and everywhere in between as destinations. I have no doubt that Crystal Castles’ eerie, video-game-soundtrack-esque music will get old, quickly. In fact, I’m quite sure that it’s already happening. In fact, at this very moment, if you listen very closely, you might be able to hear a hundred people across the world clicking ‘delete’ on their Crystal Castles mp3s, and heading for the iTunes store to check out some Hadouken!. However, for a pair of fresh ears that were previously blissfully unaware of music that seems to sample old Atari games, and vocals that could only be described as “singing” at a stretch (to put it another way, if this song were on Jeopardy, not even Ken Jennings would be able to guess precisely what was going on: “What is angry robots moshing, Alex.” “Sorry, that was incorrect. We were looking for Alice Glass.”), all of the songs on Crystal Castles seem new and interesting. For the first hour or so, I quite enjoyed listening to the electronic jibber-jabber dominates the album, but afterwards it became quite apparent that any efforts trying to make sense of the songs were in vain. In fact, if you feel like challenging yourself, just try to make out any of the words of the song “Air War.” At first I believed the entire song was just warped loops of some imaginary language, until some intense googling revealed that the garbled vocals were, in fact, English, but also, that the lyrics were actually things like: "A husky fifenote blew/ Blew. Blue bloom is on the/ Gold pinnacled hair/A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin/ Rose of Castille." Although this is not much of an improvement in terms of comprehensibility, it is still remarkable that there are actually lyrics at all, in a traditional sense of the word. I only suggest that if Glass ever finds herself in the defendant’s seat at an insanity hearing, that she does not speak until an attorney is present. To me, Glass has more success with traditional songs like “Black Panther,” “Vanished” (in which lyrics are sampled from “Sex City”, a song by Van She), and Crystal Castles/ HEALTH collaboration “Crimewave.” Many of the other songs on the album are similar to “Air War” in that they don’t have easily discernable lyrics. Other songs had (seemingly) no lyrics at all. Muzack for grungy hipsters. Alice Practice, the album’s third single (other than “Crimewave” and “Air War”) is a very solid, moody piece. Perhaps the only song you might be able to sing, or, rather, shout along to. Apparently, this song started out as a microphone test (hence the name), and Glass had no idea the song was released until record companies called to offer record deals. This story would be more wowing if Crystal Castles wasn’t the kind of band that’s album was all songs that sound like mic tests. The album’s worth a listen, unless you’re the kind of person who likes their coffee black, and their lyrics to make sense. I’m fairly certain that some elements of the songs are lost by not seeing them performed live; I’ve heard that the duo puts on pretty wild shows. The best way to listen to these songs is with a slightly dazed mind, at a time when the analytic part of your brain has gone on vacation. Although fame and fortune might be illusive for most noise rockers, for Ethan Kath and Alice Glass, these dreams are much more than castles in the sky. By Jess Peter |
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