Album Review

Crystal Antlers’ first full-length album, Tentacles, is garnering a great deal of hype in the indie blogosphere, and much of it is warranted. The psychedelic-punk outfit from Long Beach, California, has mustered up a sound all their own, even as their new album touches on a number of influences from bluesy rock and grunge to ‘70s pop and the ‘90s NY noise scene. Their melodic assault of fuzzy guitars, double percussion, and hauntingly SoCal organ certainly doesn’t sound like anything going on right now, and may lead to new experiments in indie rock that complicate the folk-and-new-wave prescription for twenty-first century cutting-edge-ness.

The album’s first track, an instrumental number titled “Painless Sleep” sets the stage with a swirling organ line and driving beat suddenly confronted by filthy-toned guitars. The method flows into the second song, “Dust,” where crackling screeches of guitar and the early-Cobain howl of frontman Johnny Bell join the fray. If you were wondering whatever became of the guttural energy of garage rock, well, here it is, and Crystal Antlers have channeled it for the masses.

Listen to “Painless Sleep”
Listen to “Dust”

Two early standout tracks exemplify the band’s approach to rather catchy pop hooks buried in dense layers of almost anarchic noise: first the chunky rattle of “Time Erased,” which sounds eerily like some classic of early rock-n-roll getting a live cover from a gutsier version of Iggy & the Stooges. The big single here could be “Andrew,” with its howling and soulful chorus that will have you thinking ? and the Mysterians and Sonic Youth were once part of the same band. The song lingers in your ears long after you hear it, just the way a pop song should, but the barrage of sound Crystal Antlers have just put you through is hardly ready for Clear Channel Radio programming (which is a complement, of course).

Listen to “Time Erased”
Listen to “Andrew”

The slowed-down blues of “Until the Sun Dies (Part 1)” builds to the kind of thrashing torrent that makes me want to see the band play live. “Memorized” returns to the hook-based pop-noise of “Andrew,” this time with a more dizzying carnivalesque organ line and a little more freedom to explore the inner pockets of the band’s sound. “Glacier” sounds like the inverted racket behind the easy-listening veneer of a ‘70s AM-radio love song. “Your Spears” and “Swollen Sky” keep up the album’s overall sound—the first with its speed-addled organ riff and the second with its slow progression into utter noise. The crowning achievement, however, is with the final track, “Several Tongues.” Part space-rock expansiveness and part arty dissonance experiment, the seven-minute bombardment is a virtual manifesto on where Crystal Antlers wants to take music.

Listen to “Until the Sun Dies (Part 1)”
Listen to “Several Tongues”

The only thing holding the group back for me is the one thing a lot of listeners and fans are going to appreciate: namely, the hackneyed vocal screech that can be heard on about a third of all hardcore albums (those which screech rather than growl) and at least one Nirvana record (Bleach). Johnny Bell’s vocal performance may fit with this early rendition of the band, and likely sounds great live, but here it gets in the way of a group that is pushing outward in new interesting directions and threatens to pin them all down into a category that is limiting at best. For now, it doesn’t keep Tentacles from being one of the most promising records out this year.

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