Crystal Castles- Crystal Castles (II)
Child abuse, religious cannabilism, nightmares, accidents, and all the monsters under your bed. This is the new release from Crystal Castles: the second self-titled debut called Crystal Castles (II). I wish it was an easier pill to swallow, but the band’s art, photos, and live performance would tell the same story. Since the Toronto band’s inception as a duo in 2004, they suffered success, spectacle, and crisis. The band’s Glastonbury Festival set was cut in June of 2008 due to artistic disputes. Lead singer Alice Glass thought repeated stage-diving and climbing on the sound rig was art and the organizers did not. This was followed by an invitation to tour with Nine Inch Nails in August of that year. Glass smashes a drum set on Halloween and the band opens for Blur. The band sells t-shirts with an image of Madonna with a black-eye, finds themselves in a brief whirlwind of copyright problems with the original artist, and then a few months later Glass tops NME’s Cool List. History would suggest that the band’s punishment for destroying stuff and getting in trouble is more public attention. Now this is not a new concept (Eminem and Axl Rose), but it seems a little like giving a child a lollipop every time he has a tantrum. This kind of sordid past makes managers, agents, promoters, and fans all wary of a band and also expectant (i.e. Relapse and Chinese Democracy). But that’s all history, as the band releases a striking new record that absolves them of their past indiscretions and maybe a few future lapses.
In short hand, II is an electronic album, but it never feels like your cousin’s house music that bleeds through the walls. Ethan Kath’s production is never force fed ad nauseum. There is an element of “take-it-or-leave” that attracts or completely puts off. From “Baptism”, with techno, euro-pop tendencies not unlike Kylie Minogue, to “Doe Deer”, noise punk with crunchy guitars, blow-out bass, and oscillating screams, the album invites intrigue. Yet, its layered, complex, a-rhythmic sound does not afford listeners any pop liberties. The songs are comfortably manic in that every repetition is made unique and detailed, and allowed to evolve. On “Year of Silence”, the layers of chaotic sound pile on top of each other slowly until the incomprehensible mess is released back to simple beat like a device borrowed from House music. “Celestica” builds and sinks with glitchy Nintendo blips, music-frozen-in-repetition sound, a musicbox following the vocal melody, and the haunting, distorted vocals borrowed from Drag music. Listening closely, you hear the beat pan from left to right sporadically. This nuance shows Kath’s vocabulary and the help co-producer Jacknife Lee (Weezer, AFI, Snow Patrol, and U2) provides. The harmonic vocals are obscured, sliced, and chopped in “Empathy” so they become a part of the metallic beat.
Crystal Castles succeed in creating backdrops and settings for their music. The album art, a desaturated scene of a long-haired boy trekking through a cemetery, gives us the dark entryway to view the album. This is achieved through the production—kick; clap; heavy distortion; downward, minor melodies; robotic/mechanical noises; and garage rock riffs—and the lyrics. “Fainting Spells” has the band sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeah’s with inaudible words and double time screaming vocals processed with LFO effects. The song feels in effect like the title’s suggestion, contrasting moments of aliveness with phased out fainting. The album’s only cover, Platinum Blonde’s “Not In Love” does not bring fourth the lyrics, but instead hides behind the glistened march beat. The Sigur Ros sample in “Year of Silence” comes off as a single weak spot, employing more club-centric repetition and capitalizing on a comparison to the original to validate the song.
The lyrics on II are like a bipolar’s medicine cabinet, collaged words to evoke images. “Celestica”, the album’s sacrilegious single, condemns Christian institutions and gives us gems like, “Do you pray with your eyes closed naturally” and a metaphorical (?) suggestion of religions eating their young. The very distant “Intimate” gives us a frightening character possibly taken after taken NuShawn Williams (a 20-year-old accused of spreading HIV to hundreds of women in 1996 and 1997). “You’re Positive but they don’t need to know / Another boy, another girl, another place to go.” Kath’s spray shot of high frequency sound sends this message home, disrupting sleep. Underwater bubbling, distorted calls of “Mommy”, and the childish toy sounds, imply child abuse in “I Am Made of Chalk.” We are given questions about femininity and the Church’s idea of limbo for children in “Pap Smear.” “Violent Dreams” tells the muddled story of a terrible accident. I imagine it as a conversation between two drunk kids leaving a party. One says “Won’t you let me, [drive the car]?” and “If I were you Chrissie, I’d rather…[you didn't drive].” In this story, they crash and Chrissie is saved before the car catches on fire. How did I get this idea? I don’t know, but that’s what their music does at the best of times. It makes you assume the worse or, better said, the cruelest, Shakespearian irony.
But listening to this album does not inspire depression. When looking at the lyrics, you may be put in a sad but academically challenged mood. This will be overshadowed by II’s subtleties of sound. We relish the album’s rich darkness, but also the escape from its scary hauntings. We seek out the breakout cathedral uplifts in “Suffocation”, as if a breath of fresh air. Though less momentous, we need the three brighter, melodic songs at the end of the album before closing with “I Am Made of Chalk.” In this style, the obvious comparison is another raucous, live, electronic import, Justice.
Frankly, the lyrics are less revealing then the production. They depend too much on repetition and shy away from telling a story or giving away too much. We need more context to understand the band. The liner notes do not list the album’s lyrics and their website is missing three songs (“Vietnam”, “Violent Dreams”, “I’m Made of Chalk.” Why? We don’t know and we don’t really know who these standoffish, thrashing monsters are? Whether they are bad monsters (breaking shit at shows) or good monsters (giving us albums that challenge electronic music), it is not clear. This makes Crystal Castles difficult to associate with, unlike the fervor and sass of Karen O.
What’s enchanting about everything Crystal Castles does is that it is always a suggestion. Like the play/film Doubt, not only are we unsure of what the band is insinuating, but even if we were convinced, we wouldn’t know whether or not we want to believe that the world is that frightening. It’s “Celestica”’s uncommonly direct and intimate “When it’s cold outside, hold me, don’t hold me” that makes us think Glass really doesn’t know what she wants and whether the world is as she says it is. In this moment, we are drawn closer to them. You don’t have to pull an Axl Rose. Nobody wants another Chinese Democracy (particularly Axl Rose). It’s okay to “[e]ntertain and take a bow.”
-Hunter Motto
