Crystal Castles

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)

I was going to say something akin to that but katherine said it better

yup

Glass herself has debunked the myth that “Alice Practice” etc were recorded without her consent or knowledge. She cites them as Kath’s campaign to minimise her creative role in the band, a bit like “well she didn’t know what she was doing but I saw the potential.” So that’s not abusive per se, whatever the ugliness of the relationships outside that context.

Although if you meant that the motivation behind the extremist/desperate tone of her vocals was her real life horrifying relationship, and that’s abhorrent, then yes agree absolutely.

yeah I agree there was no way to make that leap based on the music alone. But critics did look the other way when the band cynically exploited domestic abuse for marketing purposes, and critics readily bought into the narrative that both Kath and Glass were both difficult, almost equally problematic people. Again, not saying we could have or should have known what was actually going on, but there were some red flags that make me feel a shitload guiltier about having supported this band than I do compared to, like, Pinegrove or something

Although if you meant that the motivation behind the extremist/desperate tone of her vocals was her real life horrifying relationship, and that’s abhorrent

yeah exactly, even disregarding the circumstances of the recordings, which I can't know (maybe they were fun and enjoyable and a great experience for everybody), it's horrific knowing the muse wasn't fictional, that it was in some pretty clear ways a reflection of a toxic, controlling relationship. And it's really not much of a leap based on the reporting to guess that Kath justified his abusive tactics as "in the interest of the art" or some horrid BS like that

Extremely good news.

I won in court today!! the defamation lawsuit against me was dismissed !
thank you so much for the love and support throughout this ugly process

— ALICE GLASS (@ALICEGLASS) February 23, 2018

very nice

Excellent news

katherine otm

I really liked this band and definitely part of that was this obscurely sinister aspect of their sound, but now those features can only be understood as sickening. But only in retrosepcr. At the time I never thought it “sounded like a woman being abused,” I thought it sounded like a dynamic, unusal vocalist giving voice to feelings like desperation and anger.