Crack

If someone had released Sarin gas into the Anson Rooms on Sunday October 17 Bristol’s scenester-rah population would have been depleted by at least 1000.

Glancing at the crowd you wondered how many of them were there because they genuinely liked Crystal Castles. How many didn’t have a clue what they were like, but someone cool on their course mentioned going to see them. How many fancied ‘moshing’ for the first time but not to anything hardcore or metal as it would wreck their new term All Saints T-Shirt. And how many were curious as to whether singer(and in this case the term must be used very loosely) Alice Glass would have a breakdown on stage/lose it and hit someone/fall off the speaker stacks or just play up to her ‘I’m a bit mental and have taken loads of drugs’ reputation.

Main support Health began in lukewarm and distracted fashion however as their set progressed they gradually locked into a fearsome, danceable aural assault. Raging synths, rampaging guitars and dirty bass counterpointed by melancholic almost monotone vocals shouldn’t work, but with Health they do and to devastating effect. Health are more a rock band than an electro act as their frequent bracketing with Crystal Castles implies and are all the more entertaining for it. They may not be re-inventing the wheel but they are doing something exciting with it.

When Crystal Castles took to the stage, the majority of the crowd greeted them in suitably rapturous fashion; the remainder were perhaps wondering why the band insisted on all the photographers standing on stage rather than in the pit. Oh yes, it was because Alice Glass was liable to ‘go off on one’ and go into the crowd as she shouted, shrieked and screamed incomprehensible (despite the massive use of the autotuner at the sound desk, kudos to the techie operating it) lyrics over obvious electro bleepery and basslines.

The Guardian described Crystal Castles in their preview as ‘someone shouting whilst someone else played a video game, but in a good way’ a more accurate description I cannot imagine, excepting the ‘in a good way’. After three songs the set became eminently predictable to the point of tedium. Though the moshers at the front, where the sound was generally appalling might disagree, perhaps this is the bands true metier, soundtracking rah-scenesters rucking. And like a rah-scenester rucking, nobody really gets hurt, nothing interesting happens and it’s completely inauthentic.

Crystal Castles are possibly one of the most over-hyped acts to emerge in the past five years. Self-mythologising and acting out the most obvious, hackneyed rock clichés, they are the Emperor's New Clothes incarnate.

In this day and age of careful press and publicity management, any act signed to a major label can have the worst of their excesses kept out of the ‘News’ section of the NME and the ‘Extras’ columns written by tabloid showbiz hacks who don’t really know who they. Strange that Crystal Castles have had their antics splurged all over the press in recent years. Genuinely rock’n’ roll or just publicity whores?



Words: Louise Trimby

http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles

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