Your Band Blows

Ask anyone who thinks that the early '80s were a good time for music, culture or anything in general besides conservative politics if they were actually alive during that era, and the answer will without a doubt be "no." Anyone who remembers the '80s remembers it as having created a lot of badly produced, ridiculous music, fashion and visual art.

That’s why the recent resurgence of rehashed lo-fi new wave dance-pop really mystifies me. As a dedicated student of history and an '80s child I’ve studied as much as possible about the period of time best known for pop art, bad pop, Pop Rocks, soda pop wars, poppers and a drug commonly referred to by the nickname "cola." As far as I can tell, the majority of people running around during the '80s were a bunch of coked-up narcissists fueled by greed and lacking in any aesthetic value whatsoever. Why we, as a society, would want to relive those times through such a powerful medium as music makes no sense. Maybe it’s fitting that a lot of the most buzzed-about music these days sounds derivative of, if not identical to, the new wave movement of the early '80s, because I seem to be meeting a lot of coked-0up narcissists fueled by greed and … you get the picture.

Now that we have a context, let’s talk about Crystal Castles. Packed with enough lo-fi blips and retro dance beats to put any early-'80s band to shame, CC manages to separate themselves from the herd of bands riding this trend (Empire of the Sun, Ladyhawke) by having “vocalist” Alice Glass scream incoherently through heavily effect-laden vocals. The result is something like a rave-mashup nightmare. With no thought given to song structure, melody or even a pervasive use of tone, the majority of Crystal Castles' music seems accidental, and dependent on AutoTune and bad Casio backing beats. As aurally heinous as the result is, I can’t help but relate it to bands like the Human League and Kajagoogoo; both terrible in their own right, but popular in their time. The only real contribution that any of the aforementioned bands made to music in general was to have a sound that was slightly off-center, and incorporate some new synth sound that probably took about two minutes to patch up on a Moog. The same applies to Crystal Castles, but what would you expect from a band that took their name from She-Ra, Princess of Power?

I do have to give it to Alice Glass though - she’s hot, in that “my parents didn’t hug me enough so I'm going to wear dark eye makeup and dance around like a monkey while gargling gravel” way. It’s interesting to see her crawl around on the hordes of hipster idiots who think that a Crystal Castles show is good performance art. I recently saw them perform, and the entire show consisted of Ethan Kath standing behind a row of electronics making semi-comprehensible noise on a black stage while Ms. Glass ran around with a strobe light screaming like her hair was on fire. The amount of thought that they put into their live show is akin to that of a drunk getting a Tasmanian devil tattoo at 2 a.m. from a seedy parlor with no sterilization; it might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the next day you've got regret, a terrible hangover and hepatitis. In this case, the regret was the 20 bucks you spent to go to the show, the hangover is from all of the acid you had to take to enjoy the performance, and the hepatitis is actually tinnitus from having your ears assaulted with loud, terrible music. Performances in the '80s were similar. If you doubt me, pull up some old Kraftwerk live shows and revel in the four guys standing behind rows of electronics making semi-comprehensible noise on a black stage. It’s actually a little more palatable without the screaming monkey woman, and at least the guys in Kraftwerk had a sense of irony.

So I guess if you’re one of those people that feels the need to outcool your friends by picking up on the most recent buzz “band,” then I guess you might want to download “Crimewave,” and force everyone to listen to it over and over again while talking about how “original” Crystal Castles is. However, if you have any sense of the cyclical nature of music and culture, you may just want to keep your interest in this band a secret. I don’t know many people that were alive in the '80s are still talking about how innovative Flock of Seagulls were - and chances are, no one will admit to liking Crystal Castles in a few years, let alone a couple of decades.