Crocodiles
Summer of Hate
Fat Possum
By Jose Fritz
There is an immortal value to the clubs with wooden floors oiled golden with sweat and human dander: greasy hands, hair gel, mucus and blood. Even at a distance the band smells of dirty basement shows and San Diego house parties. But after the shows over, and the lights are out; after the venues empty and the suns threatening to come up there are still songs to be heard. The sun rises timid at first, seeking out the last dim corners where we are still living out the vestiges of yesterday. That’s when you need songs like these. “Flash of Light” is a song you could play over and over while watching the abandoned cars burn to blackened shells at the end of the world.
In that light, perhaps it should not be surprising is that this duo is composed of Charles Rowell from Some Girls [That’s the So-Cal hardcore band Some Girls not that Juliana Hatfield project] and Brandon Welchez from The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. Being familiar with Some Girls chugga-chugga meat head riffing, I get the impression that Brandon is steering here.
Most critics know PTBUTET was always experimental musically. But Brandon also had a social engineering trip he was into. He has started riots with his deranged homo-erotic taunting, and is presently banned from performing in Salt Lake City. Then there was that urine waterfall thing... It gives you a sense of his psychotic need for attention and his equally uncontrollable urge to fuck with everything. It’s pure punk rock. I knew when that band broke up, he would be back.
The album opens with that big chapel, Ken Griffin organ sound. The Crocodiles, never ones to be misunderstood go directly from that fuzzy-keyed peaceful harmonium sound into “I Wanna Kill.” The song exists on the cusp of intelligibility. In the background a squeal of feedback runs through each stanza negotiating chord changes like it were alive.
In the chorus when he sings “I wanna kill you tonight” with all that happy Beach Boys intonation, it leaves open the possibility that he might be singing “I wanna kiss you now.” That’s the best part: it’s the distortion, the reverb, the big room echo that leave things ambiguous. The issue the most distorted ricochets of reverb since the Wooden Shjips. But that kind of experimentation can come at a price.
Crocodiles are not a one-trick psychedelic pony. The gentle washed out organ sound of “Screaming Chrome” reappears on “Sleeping with the Lord” in a bigger emptier room with yet more echo. The layers of synth remind me of tripped out Steve Hillage. In comparison a cut like “Here comes the Sky” sounds like the work of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The gentle pop psychedelia sits pristine beside the no-wave synth punk of “Refuse Angels.”
Summer of Hate could easily have fallen into discontinuity; instead over the course of the record Crocodiles stitch the songs together with careful guitar effects and a broad pallet of feedback and soft white fuzz. They avoid the dark largess of BRMC but thanks to that flat 1980s electric drum sound they still encourage lazy comparisons to Jesus and Mary Chain. I won’t be lazy. I’ll let you make your own favorite inferences to spacey rock bands of the late 1980s.
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