With their first album, ‘Alight of Night’, Crystal Stilts wowed the critics, so much so NME rated it in their top ten albums of the last decade – while that may have been a little excessive anyone who heard the album couldn’t have failed to be impressed. Indeed for me it became a vital album to listen to during a tough period, bus trips to see a loved one in hospital became sound tracked by the album. The dark gothic drone coupled with urgent, almost primitive, garage rock was perfect for the place I was in, so from a personal point of view the second Crystal Stilts album was always going to be an important one. In an age of difficult second albums it is also important the band prove their critical acclaim was justified and that their not just another flash in the pan.
Before Crystal Stilts and tonight’s acid test there were the support bands, first up Sub Pop’s bright new things Still Corners. I only managed to catch the last three or four songs of their set but that was enough to realise why Sub Pop went all the way to Scotland to sign them, dreamy slowcore, shoegaze akin to Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500 may not be the regular sound associated with Sub Pop but in Still Corners they have unearthed a gem. If you’re a fan of Wild Nothing or Surrounded then do yourself a favour and check out Still Corners, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Next on the bill were the much-respected 1990’s, much respected by fellow musicians such as Mogwai and Franz Ferdinand anyway. They are a band that has been on the cusp for a good four, or five years without any real breakthrough. It’s understandable why they are respected musicians, containing at least one former member of the great, and much missed, V Twin, but sadly the set proved just why the breakthrough to bigger things has never come. That’s not to say that they were poor, far from it, making a blistering punk sound, incorporating early 70’s Bowie with Television and most obviously Richard Hell and The Viodoids, all bands I love. Sadly though its far, far too obvious that their bands the 1990’s love, and instead of wearing their influences on their sleeves and incorporating them into their own sound, they just sound like a band doing an identikit version of the songs they love. They are clearly too talented musicians to do just pale imitations but much like The Brian Jonestown Massacre, until they bring their own talent and ideas to the forefront of their music they are a band I will find very hard to love.
The sound of drone filling the venue which welcomed New York’s Crystal Stilts to the stage and any doubts about them being able to live up to the hype and promise of their first album quickly vanished. The hypnotic drum beat, scratchy, urgent guitars, drone tinged keyboard and vocals almost impossible to hear, due to them being deliberately mixed at the same level as the other instruments, may sound like a recipe for disaster, and for many other bands it would be, but Crystal Silts aren’t just any other band. As the vocals and instruments battle for control somehow it all manages to come together to make an irresistible sound evoking The Velvet Underground and Spaceman 3, making it clear the band has earned every bit of critical praise they have received. The psychedelic tinges of the Velvets and Spaceman 3 are complimented with a raw, savage garage sound influenced by bands like early 60’s legends The Sonics and The Monks to create a dark mesmerising experience. While the Detroit garage scene of the early to mid 2000’s ran out of steam, without a new direction to explore, bands like Crystal Stilts, Singapore Sling, Black Angels, and Dead Skeletons, amongst others, have taken the Detroit sound but mixed it with psychedelic experimentation, to create music that has roots in the past but has its feet firmly in the here and now. While mainstream music continues to suffer a malaise, in the underground something special is stirring, and Crystal Stilts are one of the flag bearers, make sure you join them.
www.myspace.com/stillcorners
www.myspace.com/1990sband
www.myspace.com/crystalstilts
