At what point does a musician’s behavior become so indefensible that you can no longer support their music? For me, that bar is pretty high. I’m usually able to overlook all but the most vile indiscretions and enjoy a musician’s albums on their own terms, the same way I can enjoy a Woody Allen film without condoning the director’s marriage. Like most people, though, my standards are inconsistent. I'll listen to domestic abuser James Brown without thinking twice about it, yet I almost feel a moral obligation not to support Chris Brown.
I can sympathize, then, with those who refuse to listen to Crystal Castles, the Canadian duo that has emerged in a few short years as one of electronic music’s most boorish acts, running afoul of copyright etiquette and physically assaulting the most innocent of bystanders in concert. They are, by many accounts, simply not good people, so why give them your money?
Self-titled like their first record, the new Crystal Castles albumand on sale digitally now, a month before physical copies hit stores, thanks to a tenacious leakanswers that question bluntly: Because these awful people make wonderful music.
Though it opens with “Fainting Spells,” a claustrophobic squall of noise, 2010's Crystal Castles soon reveals itself to be a kinder, gentler sequel to 2008's Crystal Castles. Gone, mostly, are the 8-bit video-game bleeps, replaced by a richer rainbow of dream-pop and shoegaze. Gorgeous tracks like “Celestica” and “Not In Love” would fit comfortably on the last M83 record, if their beats didn’t grind quite so hard in reverence to rave culture, while other standouts like “Baptism” and “Year of Silence” are among the most purely danceable the band’s crafted, all untamed, Euro-house synths and ripping bass synths. The duo is more interested in starting the party than killing it this time around.
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On the Castle’s confrontational debut album, the group’s insolent image worked for themthey positioned themselves as dance culture’s spiteful misanthropes. Their new record, however, is best heard divorced from the band’s reputation. Unlikable as she comes across in the real world, singer Alice Glass is a remarkably sympathetic figure here, revealing a tender side the first Crystal Castles album only teased (and even then only so she could scream herself hoarse a track later). Glass doesn't scream much this time. Instead, she sings of terrible thingsthe song titles say it all: “Suffocation,” “Violent Dreams,” “Vietnam,” “Pap Smear”while digital manipulation robs her girlish voice of its humanity. If you’d never seen her drunkenly punch a fan in the face in concert before, you could almost take pity on her.
