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HOT OFF THE PRESS (#15) – Crystal Stilts & Times New Viking
It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for Nick Courtright’s weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Click here for other recent editions of Hot Off the Press, featuring acts such as TV on the Radio, Deerhoof, Cold War Kids, of Montreal, Juana Molina, Final Fantasy, Peter Bjorn & John, White Denim, and Grizzly Bear.
Crystal Stilts – Alight of Night
to be released October 28th on Slumberland Records
Report Card: B+
So a couple years ago we had the onslaught of Wolf bands, from Wolf Parade to Wolfmother to Wolf Eyes and so on, all of them surely wishing they’d been the only wolf-oriented act on the market. And this year seems to be the year of Crystal, as a few months ago marked the well-liked but underexposed Crystal Antlers EP, we were won over by Crystal Castles’ take on 8-bit, and now we have the brooding and ambien-oozing debut LP of Crystal Stilts, whose Alight of Night is a study in playing one card over and over again, and being real glad that one card is a good one.
Churning and waterlogged, there’s something appreciably dour about this music—like it would be a physical pain to smile or bring joy to yourself or others—yet that same dourness is what makes it captivating, as if the woe woe woe of Crystal Stilts’ approach is so draped in mascara tears that fans have no choice but to bob their heads in utter happiness that they found something so compulsively hip-shaking and degenerate. Sounding not wholly unlike the more wickedly uninflected angles of Velvet Underground, this band is cut from the same cloth as one of today’s other big hype acts—and Crystal Stilts’ Brooklyn neighbors—Vivian Girls. But while Vivian Girls are lauded (or curiously dismissed) due to their uniqueness as an all-girl act, and also as an act that embraces irony like an addiction, Crystal Stilts have no obvious sticking points, and are left to wallow in the murk alone.
It’s hard to pull key tracks off Alight of Night, as the whole of the album tends to blur together in a liquid haze of big room reverb and joylessness. The album opener, though, is a sure attention-getter, and with good reason, because the audience should probably be paying attention. As a whole, the record is uniformly strong, and you can step into it at any point and be satisfied, even if listening to it straight through can become a little monotonous. But in the end this is a nice little piece of droning, moody work, and makes for an album just about perfectly suited for wandering through a midnight fog.
Listen to songs by Crystal Stilts here
Times New Viking – Stay Awake [EP]
released October 7th on Matador
Report Card: B
The intriguing thing about an EP from a band like Times New Viking is that Times New Viking has such a singular, muddy, disgusting sound based around the same three instruments and the same yelling unmelodic vocals that it would be easy for them to paint themselves into a corner. While the Columbus, Ohio act’s two albums up until this point, Present the Paisley Reich and Rip It Off, the latter of which came out earlier this year, distinguished them as an up-and-coming lo-fi act that could blow the speakers out on your car and keep the energy high, the rambling, somewhat haphazard nature of the trio made them seem destined to run out of good ideas. The upshot of this is that all of their music has had a tendency to blur together, and while Stay Awake adds a few nice tracks to their resume, and sees them expanding their sonic pallet a bit, they are still, for better or for worse, fundamentally the same act they’ve always been. But that, despite the worries, is not a bad thing.
At its root, Stay Awake is a fuzzed out mess, and it’s difficult to figure if what Times New Viking is doing makes any sense—after all, it’s impossible not to wonder whether they would be “better” if they stopped recording on such shitty equipment. But tracks such as “Call and Respond” and “No Sympathy” are no less than excellent at doing what the band does best, and demonstrate that their towing the party line can result in some pretty excellent rockers. So while Times New Viking hasn’t received the same measure of nationwide acclaim that other, similarly fuzzed out bands have found—perhaps also due to what appears to be a hesitance to distinguish themselves as individuals and appoint a true face for the band—they’ve shown that staying the course is, for now at least, a pretty solid decision.
Listen to songs by Times New Viking here