Crystal Castles 'play rough'

Nintendo synth holds the Canadian duo together.

By Kelsey Whipple

Published April 4, 2008

Alice Glass does not live next door. While the band she fronts operates somewhere on the brink of noise and music, Crystal Castles’ impish singer is stuck between vampiress and pixie. Which Castle wears the pants is debatable, but Glass wears the marker-thick eyeliner to match the band’s musical nihilism — acerbic, biting noise-pop that trebles volume levels and burns synapses. If she looks a bit like New-Rave Barbie, she’s definitely the “punk and disorderly” edition.

On their self-titled debut, Glass and partner Ethan Kath play a glitchy mix of freak fun, that, even as it threatens to break down the hype machine it rode in on, makes for a notoriously rowdy good time. To date, the best description of CC is the characteristically cryptic one played across the duo’s MySpace.com profile: “We are 1 boy 1 girl. We play rough.” If ominous, the introduction is an appropriate one to the music the Canadians create, a distinctly electric take on pop firmly grounded in the fuzzy blips and bleeps of the arcade. The sound structure is like nothing as much as an oppressed pinball machine.

Ten seconds in, the duo is already posturing on the fringe of Mario Bros., as the dry robotica of “Untrust Us” edges into the Game Boy territory shamelessly exploited again in “Xxzxcuzx Me.” Crystal Castles’ debut spends most of its length playing two extremes — like either a tightly wired machine or the same machine on the fritz.

Tortured as the sound sometimes is, the mix of Glass’ withering vocals and Kath’s Nintendo synth is what holds together the album’s sense of intelligent mischief. “Alice Practice” is almost indecent in its rawness, a violent bout of nausea in which both Glass and the machines that back her sound like they’re breaking. The lyrics are in the same state of disrepair: “I live low/I lisp, I die/Sugar shooting/Bled with deadbeats/Only crawl/So your sad eyes/Quite Christian/Blood.” While Glass and Kath often draw on novelty, they don’t rely on it, and the remnants of their eight-bit beginning still sear. It’s sour, yeah, but that’s not the point.

Most of the songs from the band’s Alice Practice EP found their way onto the full-length, including its collaboration with LA noiserockers HEALTH. “Crimewave” is pure plastic pop, its structure balanced around a loop of unadulterated sugar-synth while Kath stutters something about “short breaths” and “nice breasts.” The album’s lyrics are mostly inaudible (there’s a good chance “Xxzxcuzx Me”’ is about “robot AIDS”), but listeners can be sure they’re hardxcore.

There are bound to be slip-ups on a 16-track album, but Crystal Castles only have outliers. CC has spent a lot of time remixing, and its work with Klaxons shows. “Black Panther”’s obvious new-rave bent is barely suppressed by tightly engineered synth, as if trying to hide its true colors under CC’s moody black beats. At the end, “Tell Me What to Swallow” is sweet when all you’ve been given is scary, (Dear Horrors, Is this what you meant? Love, Crystal Castles). The shoegazer would be perfectly at home on a Jesus and Mary Chain album, even if it’s a little dainty for this one.

The duo’s music bleeds the debauchery they back up onstage — in need of nothing as much as dark, violent strobe lights. There’s a lesson, here, though: Either Crystal Castles have spent a lot of time experimenting, or they really know how to fake it.