Crystal Stilts 'Alight of Night'

By DougWallen on Jul 01 2009, 03:00PM

Crystal Stilts
Alight of Night
(Spunk/EMI)

One might suspect Brooklyn’s water supply of being spiked with some chemical equivalent of reverb and distortion, if the borough’s new wave of noise-pop and psych bands is any indication. There’s Blank Dogs, Vivian Girls, and Woods, just to name a few, and summing up the whole murky movement is the debut album by Crystal Stilts, issued late last year in the States and now seeing Australian release. Alight of Night is pop all the way, but pop soaked in such a wealth of effects that the soupy atmosphere is almost more of a focus than the doleful melodies and droning rhythm section.

Comprised of guitarist JB Townsend, keyboardist Kyle Forrester, bassist Andy Adler, and drummer Frankie Rose, the band’s most noticeable feature is vocalist Brad Hargett, whose funereal deadpan is even more of a downer than Ian Curtis or Morrissey, two obvious influences. His soggy baritone is mixed low in the mix, with reverb-caked drums and flinty jangle cruising consistently overhead. Yet even when we only catch snatches of Hargett’s lyrics, his delivery is weirdly charismatic.

The first track, ‘The Dazzled’, is a suitable entry into Crystal Stilts’ smeared, off-kilter sound, reeling to and fro as if each band member is about 10 drinks into the night. The following, would-be theme, ‘Crystal Stilts’, wobbles along to a seedy surf-rock vibe owed to vibrating guitar and frosty keys, with Hargett moaning about “distorted dreams”. ‘Prismatic Room’ then recalls Get Lost-era Magnetic Fields, ‘Departure’ sparks up some nice rumble and friction between instruments, and even a tambourine sounds depressed on ‘The SinKing’. Through it all, the weedy intertwining of the band’s opaque rattling and Hargett’s submerged singing is of low-key, slow-burning fascination.

‘Shattered Shine’, written and released as the band’s first single when it was just a duo of Hargett and Townsend, is a prime example of the way Crystal Stilts craft titles that fit exactly the specific feel of each song. Even the two-minute ‘Verdant Gaze’, with crickets chirping and yet another newfound keyboard setting washing across it, is dead-on, and earlier, ‘Graveyard Orbit’ somehow evokes exactly what its title conjures. Ditto the inky imagery and lush malaise of ‘Bright Night’ and ‘Spiral Transit’. Opening with a faintly twee twang, the five-minute closer ‘The City In The Sea’ is the album’s longest and least sinister track, holding our attention with the soft refrain “I’m still astonished by this spark of life”.

If all of this reads like a monochromatic listening experience, it’s not in the least. There’s much miniature splendour in the sonic details of Crystal Stilts, whether it’s the Flying Nun influence in the Chills-esque keys and Clean-indebted jangle or the spectre of the band’s American label, Slumberland, whose ’90s roster has become widely influential. It’s fitting, then, that the band has become a lynchpin in the once-defunct label’s steady re-ascension. Alongside much-hyped standard bearers the Pains of Being Pure at Heart as well as a clutch of lesser-known acts that now includes Melbourne’s own Summer Cats, Crystal Stilts are reinventing the Slumberland sound for a generation that doesn’t yet know just how pretty noise can be.

Doug Wallen