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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Crystal Castles I: The Best Damn Synth Punk Record Out There

This first record by the now defunct synth punk duo is a masterpiece. A true work of art and, to top it all off, it manages to be fun and cool without sacrificing great songs.

When we start this record off with "Untrust Us" we see that, though able to handle more mature topics with a kind of child-like finesse, Crystal Castles maintains a special brand of humor. It is, in some ways, similar to the contradictions of a Nirvana song. At once being sincere but also strangely cynical.

To then go on to have songs such as "Xxzcuzx Me", which effortlessly play with the idea of being more robot than human, in a kind of pulp science fiction way, we can see that Crystal Castles is a band to be reckoned with. They are not the same as other bands that use chip-tune because, though fun, they manage to have white hot fury. They manage to write songs about humans in the digital age with ease.

Of course, there are a few tracks that, while not bad, I would say are used as "fillers." 1991 for instance, while not a bad instrumental, does seem to be there simply because they needed to round out the time for the album. While these moments don't add much, they certainly do not take anything away.

Through and through we see on this album that Crystal Castles has a penchant and talent for mixing the dark with the bright. It is only too bad that they could not keep such expertise on subsequent releases.

Oh well.

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