polaroids of androids

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles

Toronto duo Crystal Castles have created quite a buzz with the release of their debut self-titled LP. It's really not hard to see why either. The music is noticeable, in fact it's impossible to ignore. Imagine getting let into a frighteningly chaotic house party, but rather than being in a house it's inside an Atari. The tracks announce themselves with hard and repetitive beats, vocals delivered with a detached cool, and interceptions of 8-bit noises seemingly lifted from their childhood video game soundtracks.

Its true that the vocals are occasionally indecipherable, not in a "holy shit there's someone behind me" way a-la The Knife, but more in a "this shit's so hot, it doesn't matter what I'm saying" kind of way. It's actually done to great effect, especially in the second track, Alice Practice. In fact, even if the rest of this record was abysmal this band would still be worth talking about purely on the strength of this track alone. Consistent, distorted beats are completely torn apart by digital attacks as the heavily effected vocals let out desperate cries that demand your attention.

In a similar vein, the brilliant XXZXCUZX is a 1:52 frontal assault on the listener. It's in tracks such as these that Crystal Castles really approach the brink of disorder defeating structure. The duo thrive on the juxtaposition of highly ordered, slightly generic, club beats and hyperactive, out of control, digital glitches. When disorder does reign the results are near-apocalyptic.

It's when the band allow the structure to win out that the results become somewhat bland and uninteresting. For example, while Good Time is a welcome reprieve from the intensity of the first half of the record, the listener keeps willing the band to hit the self-destruct button and really mess the track up. This is not to say that they should endeavor to create an album full of violently destructive songs, just that the weaker moments tend to be where the beats and melodies are more exposed.

In contrast, the single Courtship Date is an illustration of the potential the band has to create structured pop gems that are melodically catchy and intriguing. This potential is underlined by the final track, Tell Me What To Swallow, where the duo discard the pyrotechnics of the rest of the album and instead create a near-ethereal acoustic number that relies on ambience as much as anything else. It's a complete surprise to the listener and at odds with everything else on the record, but is perfectly short and impossibly sweet and certainly flags some interesting paths for the band to explore in the future.

The other major criticism of the record is that there is a marked gap in the quality of several songs and some others. While tracks such as Alice Practice, XXZXCUZX, Untrust Us, Courtship Date, Crimewave and Black Panther are brilliant and essential to the make up of the record, others simply aren't. This gives the record a somewhat disjointed and inconsistent feel, making it difficult for the listener to become completely immersed in it. That said, there are enough interesting tracks to make this debut both worthy of recommendation and be taken as an indicator of what they may produce in the future.