Crow 'Arcane'

Crow
Arcane
(Non-Zero Records)

Crow’s return to the studio in its original line-up sees the Sydney band resurrect a largely forgotten way of doing things, although many are now remembering its pleasures. The timing slips in and out of measure. The bass falls first this side and then that of the kick drum. The guitar solos meander around the beat. The lyrics sometimes cram into bars, rushing to complete the lines by the bar’s end—often they just spill over the sides, drifting out of time and you can all go fuck your new-fangled Pro Tools editing. The band skids toward its changes from chorus to verse, sometimes outpacing itself like Road Runner careening off a cliff. It’s a push and pull against the discipline of the metronome. Just like the '90s.

Everything is in its place, then. Crow in their original form—and with the various member interchanges—were legendarily volatile and an uncertain prospect onstage. Recent performances suggest less volatility, but a remnant disinterest in tightness. Arcane, then, represents the band as they are: an even spread of songs from the two songwriters, Peter Fenton and Peter Archer, recorded in a way that sounds live, loud and spontaneous.

Initially, this all seems like one of the most exciting '90s returns. Arcane’s first three cuts rate as highly as anything Crow did in the old days. The first single, ‘Ghost at the Crossroads’ is rightly placed as opening track here. It’s Peter Fenton’s wavering statement of intent—albeit an uncertain declaration, openly noting in song that ‘this rock’n’roll act’ has spent ‘ten years in space’. The track’s pulled along by that same dark undertow which swirls beneath all of Fenton’s best work (see ‘Broken Machine’). Guitar strings flap out of tune, overloading amps, pedals—vibrating air like an errant blast from a brass section. The tension within the song is unending, even though the chorus feels like a brief release. It’s not until the steady acoustic strum of ‘The Whole World Turns’ that true relief comes. After the unsettling churn of ‘Crossroads,’ this comes on like one of those Paul Kelly songs which seems to have been around forever. It’s a story song with guitar hooks, it’s Fenton domesticated and unharried.

Even still, it sounds far more complex than the work of Peter Archer, the other songwriter here. The co-existence of two songwriters in a band can work in various ways. In Crow, the difference between the Peters, Archer and Fenton, is stark. And the difference has grown starker with time, the polarity pushing further and further apart. If Fenton carries the best of what the '90s sometimes had to offer—heavy, churning, relentless, sludgy, melancholic, loud—then Archer carries some of its worst traits. His songs are dotted with clanger lyrics (‘The Editor’s Gone’), sloppy timing, single-note guitar work and singing in search of a key (‘Cold Wind Hollow’). He has also made the switch to that ‘alt.country’ and ‘pub rock’ songwriting default which seems to happen to so many songwriters at a certain point. In this movement, he’s dropped some of the stranger, art pop, XTC-styled chord changes that marked his earlier style. On old singles like ‘Ravine’ and ‘Railhead’ Archer’s poppier writing carried more tension and stronger dynamics than it does here—perhaps suggesting that Arcane was the work of two solitary songwriters bringing tunes to the band, rather than a set bashed out in collaborative rehearsal-room sessions.

A playlist experiment with Arcane proves that an EP of ‘Fenton songs’ holds up very well against older material—with the exception of strange funk-rock misstep ‘Hesitate’. An EP of ‘Archer songs’, by comparison, also fares a little better for gathering his songwriting style in one place. For one, it makes clear Archer’s ability to turn in a catchy chorus: some of his wavering chorus melodies stay around for days after a single airing. These Archer tracks all stand better away from the intensity of Fenton’s songs, too, which often make Archer’s meanderings feel almost adolescent.

Which circles us back to questions of contemporary relevance and the value of Crow’s return. It’s difficult not to measure a band against its own past, particularly when the gap between public appearances is as long as a decade. Do they still have something to say? Why this band again, now? The law of diminishing returns suggests that any band, no matter how radical their original appearance, will become less invigorating over time. But I think Crow do still have something to say and that their craft bears all the marks of their history—that their time away, in other words, renewed them for the next round. At times (particularly ‘Almost Saturday’), it made me think of a band like Silkworm—a band that has not entered my head in many years. In these days of endless '90s retreads and returns, that’s doubtless what many people are after, a return to those ‘innocent’ sounds of the past. But against the conservative role of being rote revivalists, Crow at their most taut are still a formidable band.