Crystal Castles

wait - both of them?

hm.... he's also posting that the New Pornographers all died in a fiery bus crash. I think he's fantasizing out loud.

Yeah, pretty hilarious.

These sorts of 'jokes' = dud

maybe the New Pornographers did die and Crystal Castles were just trying to blatantly rip them off?

RIP

hope you're being a pair of unpleasant turds in heaven

Er, wow. Saw them in Nottingham last night, really wasn't expecting much - but that was the best gig I've seen this year. (Well, I say "seen" - the band were barely visible behind the smoke and strobes). The music scales up brilliantly, tracks like Crimewave and Baptism turning into thunderous juggernauts.

i'd like to see them based on what you say. LP favourites are 'Empathy' and 'I Am Made Of Chalk'.

This is awesome.

loving this

Okay, when did this band decide to actually go from bad to great?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32udqal_lyQ

I've avoided the second album until now because I just assumed it was more of the first.

This sounds good with Robert Smith. I can finally make sense of the lyrics. I wasn't that off I think:

NOT IN LOVE

I found your picture
in the back of my door.
Wont keep you at home, no one lives here anymore.
and now it burns
now we can't be friends
nothing here should end
Here we go again. Bwa bwa bwa.
Cause it's cold outside, when you coming home?
cause it's hot inside, we could lay in the park.

I'm not in love

Could it be that time has taken it's toll
won't take you so far, I am in control
and now it burns
now we can't be friends
nothing here should end
Here we go again. Bwa bwa bwa.
Cause it's cold outside, when you coming home?
cause it's hot inside, we could lay in the park.

I'm not in love
We are not in love

― Moka

transcribe crystal castles lyrics

The new album is fantastic.

I like the first album but then again I also like Atari Teenage Riot and Severed Heads

Why does no-one mention 'Celestica' on this thread?!? Top ten for me this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JITI0FskSG0

Holy shit this song with Robert Smith is amazing.

yeah 1st album was OK but the new one is pretty great

also when did these guys start writing way better Cure lyrics than RS has come up with in the last decade?

Damn, never realised that was actually a cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_PM5nLZeI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

HOLY SHIT is "Not In Love" gorgeous

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like, ridiculously so

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago)

wow the original is pretty amazing. that band was wearing the wrong clothes.

Why does no-one mention 'Celestica' on this thread?!?

My favourite track on the second album, and one of the highlights of last week's gig. (Tears in my eyes, ahem.)

I was wondering why these people were trending on Twitter and it makes much more sense now.

been playing this on repeat since yesterday

Wow it's so strange to hear Robert Smith sing a Platinum Blonde song! When I was a child The Cure was my favorite band and Platinum Blonde was the biggest band in Canada. Too bad they never hit outside of the country. BTW they had that look 5 years before Poison came out.
This is imo their best song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4SOnBDe7qs

Haha, I got that Platinum Blonde album when I was a kid from one of those grab bag things where you get 10 mystery LPs in a brown paper bag for like a buck or something. I think I listened to it quite a bit at the time. Judging from that video, I'd say they haven't really stood the test of time.

finally they live up to their thread title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTBccJpTjs0

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

HOLY SHIT is "Not In Love" gorgeous

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like, ridiculously so

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago)

― (crüt) (markers) (crüt) (markers) (crüt) (markers), Tuesday, October 26, 2010 6:20 PM (1 month ago)

So much better with Robert Smith on the vocal.

wow I am very late to this party, "violent dreams" (with the stina nordenstam samples) is amazing.

assholes or not, their new album is seriously gorgeous and danceable. although it's not a great car album, had me in a trance while I should have been watching the road, had to turn it off!

It's awesome, and way better than that piss-poor Kanye album that's one all the awards.

But I find it odd yet predictable that the band REALLY caught on with the high-school crowd. My 14 year old sister adores the band, as do all her friends, and when they recently played here in Boulder (well I'm in Denver, but anwyay:) for NYE apparently the # of 17 year old girls was abhorring, according to friends who go to school up there. I guess they've got that perfect blend of great hooks and obvious attitude/image that the under 20 crowd really latches onto.

way to bring up kanye in a thread that has nothing t odo with him!

haha imo it was just such, such, such a better contender for album of the year. i didn't listen to an awful lot from 2010 but it rly struck me as the single-handed most solid album of the year entire... there's not one song that lacks any less luster than the one preceding or post.

When I saw them live at Nottingham Rock City last autumn, almost the entire audience was under 21. And sober. And ecstatic. Which made for a fantastic atmosphere.

new album is kinda ehhhh on first listen

all the sharp poke-y edges have been filed down and even when they try for abrasive (like "insulin") it just lacks bite. maybe it's the mixing/mastering this time around? either way, the songs don't seem to be there either.

I hate terms like this, but this is a grower. I still think (II) trumps their current discography - mostly due to the almost magical amount of variety in song atmospheres and structures - but if anything, I adore the focus of this album. It feels more like a narrative than anything that has preceded, with a lot of likening to Burial's work: The songs saturate in this ambiguous but very real universe of suffering/doom/gloom, in which Alice's vocals - incessantly obscured and yet audibly echoed, as if shouting from that iconic well in Silence of the Lambs - come across as a child's unheard cries. She's a woman, sure, but it's her resolve to stay in this range of unmatured innocence (with the sultriness of age evidenced in past albums, especially in certain bits of "Celestica") with her tone of voice that creates a completely unsexualized version of herself.... case in point, a child. Lyrical themes and especially the title of the last song provide this as well.

I like this album. I don't think it does a lot to really progress the band's sound - and if the next album were to attempt as little progression as this one did, I may lose some respect for the group - but what I appreciate is this cohesiveness, this assuredness in wants and confidence in what they're able to convey. I know this sounds kinda masturabatory, but I really see the future of this band existing in concept albums, singular concepts that are done with immeasurable success.

They're really going to have to surprise me with the next release, though, as I think happy pop they've covered with the first album. They can't possibly get any gloomier than this without losing that inherent danceability that makes them so charming. I really don't know what next they're going to tackle, and considering that I also consider this album to be something of a sort of Amnesiac to (II)'s Kid A, they might suffer naturally through a Hail to the Thief stage in which they attempt to reinvigorate their sound while not particularly providing evidence that this reinvigoration was something needed in the first place, or that which is being built upon was a more matured, confident version of it's current self.

One more thing: A lot of reviews of their first album likened them to the Knife, save for that Glass's vocals did something to humanize their whole atmosphere. The next album made a considerable effort to make Glass as much as an instrument - a loop, a sample - than a human. It's this album that I really think has entirely coalesced any differention between human and electronic. I'm not sure if these are themes they're going for, but it's exciting to me to see this gradual loss of humanity with every consecutive album. Maybe that's their next step? To place both band members in a big black box, with sound emitting from both but little physical differentiation between the two.

I also saw them live some weeks back. The show was OK, and it was really fun seeing the guys, but I can't remember half the night and not sure if it was any different from the first ten minutes. Khan was resolute in playing his instruments, gazing into seemingly nothing, and Glass crowd-surfed a bit but was otherwise a figurine.

Kelpolaris--way off the mark about their live show. The blinding glare of their (totally amazing) light show, for one, either rendered you sightless for a hot second or enhanced your high or something. Alie was way more than a figurine both times I've seen her. Also crowdsurfing despite inevitable gropage is pretty rad. The new album sounds totally boring to me. Unless my headphones sucked and I'm missing a lot of texture or something it sounded like a lot was missing from the tracks. Lack of play or imagination. I definitely prefer them live. Super fun.

*Alice

III has definitely clicked for me, and i quite like it. not as much as either I or II (especially not as much as II) but i like it.

My light show consisted of red, blue and white lights. They had the cover-art as a backdrop but otherwise it was a surprisingly boring concert. There was one particularly hilarious girl, though, who could perform the same dance move in anything over 30-second intervals.

OK, so I don't know if she did this at your (fellas) shows, but there was a particularly cool instance in which Alice was held up by the crowd while on her *knees*. As in, her body was upright and continuing to sing but the crowd held onto her bent legs in order to sustain such. Khan, I think his name is, was just very meditative and I thought the fact that he placed his synth on boxes of carrying equipment an odd but sorta interesting choice.

Otherwise, Glass just had one leg propped up on a speaker and shouted directly at the crowd. For a little too long. I've seen live shows and she did considerably less jumping around and all such I've seen in YouTube clips. They've stopped an incredibly number of times in Denver/Boulder, so maybe the thrill of novelty was wearing on them.

Fascination ends

That cover with Mr. Smith is currently wrapping up three years of my life on just the necessary note, so.

heard "affection" today in the brooks brothers store in downtown princeton

A month late but their set opening for Depeche in LA was great because they did NOT give a fuck. Or rather they did, by being exactly themselves and if the crowd didn't like it, fuck 'em. Great times.

Not in Love (album version) is one of the best songs ever recorded. Didn't love their most recent release -- it felt familiar, gratuitous almost -- but this band is a classic band.