Crystal Castles

can we change thread title to Crystal Castles (suck)

Idk “Black Panther” and the album version of “Not in Love” are amazing tracks

xp It was Madonna with a black eye, and they were sued by the artist for using it without his permission.

http://i51.tinypic.com/wmmqtf.jpg

It was pretty bad then, much worse with this context now.

I never really thought about the dude. My emotional investment in the band was based on loving the albums and being a fan of her as a vocalist, performer, and personality. So it’s an odd situation in terms of what to think of this material now.

Jesus I forgot about that.

Xp

I would also request that mods remove "rule" from the thread title

I never listened to this band but is their music really no longer good

don't need it replaced with "sucks" or whatever it's just....a little uncomfortable to leave it as is

Crystal Castles (problematic)

Maybe start a new thread? I know that ilx unlike other boards does encourage the use of older threads, but rather than retconning the opinions of a decade ago we could just move the discussion to somewhere with a more appropriate title.

looks like somebody fixed it

Didn't we already knew Ethan Kath was a huge douchebag? He wrote this when Alice released her first solo single:

https://i.imgur.com/0VNlN10.png

yeah you totally don't care dude

https://i.imgur.com/0VNlN10.png

yeah I remember that happening, and people generally thinking he was a fucking dickbag because of it. I certainly never gave them any time again after she left

Also someone should tell him CC best known song is Crimewave.

You know in the context of Alice's statement that facebook post from Ethan is proof that he is an insecure piece of shit and he did enjoy undermining her.

Seems all of CC upcoming concerts have been cancelled. Hope this is a career killer for him.

I can't defend Alice either though, two friends worked with her in some venues and she's also very rude and shitty to everyone.

Seems like that's two rather different things being compared.

also sounds like she may have some reasons for being emotionally uncomfortable in work situations with strangers

Yeah of course they’re different things you’re right. Ethan apologists on the CC fb page right now are making me sick.

So much of that fourth Crystal Castles album was trolling Alice. He diminished her in statements, literally wrote her out of the band's history in its official press material, and seemed to be mocking her (and really all women) with that cover. It all seemed distasteful at the time, but in light of all the new information it's fucking abhorrent—an entire album of an abuser taunting his victim. Maybe the most morally unconscionable record since Chris Brown's Graffiti.

Yeah I feel like Alice's past rep as "difficult" has to be understood in this context. First of all she was just a kid when she started, and who knows what kind of encouragement he gave her to act out, how much she was following his lead, etc. No consolation to people who had to deal with snotty-young-punk behavior, but she was clearly coming from a weird place throughout the CC experience.

I was surprised that until this week there hadn't been much observable backlash from their fanbase (and some people who liked them enough to buy tickets to a show didn't even know that Alice wasn't in the group anymore).

https://www.facebook.com/pictureplane/posts/1688757071187015

jfc some of the comments on that thread

"seemed to be mocking her (and really all women) with that cover" the girls on swings? really?

Four nearly identical girls, on an album that swaps out one woman for another like it's no big deal. Seemed meant as commentary on how replaceable/interchangeable women are to me. How did you read it?

i never got into this band but i almost did cos i liked the name alot (and she was v compelling as a performer) . i remember Hipster Runoff talked about them a lot and did some ironic/unironic objectifying of the lead singer. the whole thing is disgusting. really glad that she is out of that situation. holy crap.

fuck that fb post btw

i read it as some goth kids on a swing, but I didn't think about it very much either.

(I've never listened to this band btw, but at one point was booked to open for them on this tour so ended up reading way more about them than I ever wanted to)

#humblebrag

Swapping out Alice Glass for basically a doppelgänger when she quit was eerie

I feel very disturbed by all of this given how much I listened to those first two albums in college

i thought the last album cover was just a nod to the horror film meme re scary dead eyed kids.

I see someone's throwing a cow.

https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/11/crystal-castles-ethan-kath-sues-alice-glass-for-defamation/

Suing her for just 300k? This will not end well for him.

The actual facebook post with his comment is worse:

https://www.facebook.com/ccrystalccastles/photos/a.10151199490370335.807013.21720030334/10159505110390335/

Passive aggressive asshole makes me think Alice is the one telling the truth and it will backfire to him. He's publicly drawing her as a drug addict with mental issues to try to discredit her account and then goes on to suggest that the only reason she is coming forth is that CC has "new success" without her - despite the fact that almost nobody really cares about either of them anymore, music-wise.

Also what the fuck at him saying he fully supported her when she left? Talking shit left and right to the media about her the minute she left, publicly shaming her doesn't seem very supportive tbh

four more accounts of ethan's predatory behavior towards fans aged 14 to 19:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-indie-rocker-accused-of-sexually-abusing-young-fans

Surprised that nobody has replied to this. Then again, not sure what to say about it myself, apart from "fuck you Ethan Kath."

pretty much.

not being sarcastic or trying to make light of but the answer i truly think is far fewer people care about crystal castles than they did a few years ago

The transgressive thrill of their abrasive feral/digital sound is kind of undermined by knowing it was made by a predatory creep and a woman under duress. It's a shame because I did love it.

Of all the stories of abusers in music over the last couple of years, I think this is the one that sickens me the most, because this is the one critics were most complicit in. Sometimes the a musician is trash comes as a total surprise, but in this case the signs were there—three albums that sounded like a woman being abused; that vile Madonna image; Kath's horrid personality. We bought into myth that it was all just art. I feel retroactively gross for having enjoyed those albums so much.

The Madonna thing alone should have been a "fuck this, this is exploitative and gross" deal breaker, but we looked the other way.

three albums that sounded like a woman being abused

Genuinely curious what this means? (I've never listened to one of their albums)

Their stuff is all over YouTube, that's kind of a hyperbolic description of Alice Glass' raw, distressed vocal style rather than suggesting actual abuse took place during the recording. At least I assume it is.

It's really not hyperbolic at. Don't want to embed anything b/c I don't want to be responsible for giving this band a cent of revenue, but one of their defining aesthetics, starting with "Alice Practice" and peaking on their third album, is "subjugated woman trapped in torturous hell, clawing like fuck to get out." Which is pretty powerful until you learn that may not have been a vision she consented to; it was a situation her bandmate put her in. This shit genuinely sounds like torture porn now.

on the other hand, the idea that a critic, even the most empathetic possible listener paying the closest possible attention, would be able to (let alone expected to) make the leap from "this album in an abrasive-sounding genre sounds abrasive" to "a woman is actually being abused in real life" doesn't sound reasonable. (it also isn't a perfect one-to-one correspondence -- there are legions of cases of industry abuse where the music sounds perfectly shiny and innocuous.)

(also in case it isn't clear abusers are scum and fuck them)