Crocodiles - Sleep Forever

The sophomore album from San Diego-based noise-rock duo Crocodiles is just the right amount of overwhelming. It’s the follow-up to last year’s debut ‘Summer of Hate’ (which, as its title was suggest, was quite the handful), and it improves on the template laid down on songs like ‘Here Comes the Sky’, whilst refining the pair’s sound just enough to give it an extra edge.

The sound that Charles Rowell and Brandon Welchez creates easy reference points. There are dashes of The Jesus And Mary Chain thrown in, as well as a hint of Spacemen 3, and even splashes of My Bloody Valentine at the record’s more intense moments, like the ferocious ‘Billy Speed’, which is simultaneously the time at which ‘Sleep Forever’ seems to become a little too much to stand. They don’t hold back on the noise, that’s for certain.

Luckily, though, the song manages to pull it together, and suddenly transforms itself into one the album’s finest moments. Which is saying a lot, because ‘Sleep Forever’ is comprised of high-quality songs right across the board. From the unashamedly epic opener ‘Mirrors’, which drifts in on an all-consuming wall of noise before giving way to grooving bass and taut drumming, its five minutes unfolding into a wondrous finale (one of the finest openers this year’s had to offer), to the relatively more subdued ‘All My Hate And My Hexes Are For You’, a song which finds the group veering into dream-pop territory and producing results worthy of anything on Beach House’s ‘Teen Dream’.

Stitched and segued together by swells of feedback, ‘Sleep Forever’ is thirty-five minutes of abrasive noise and reverb-laden vocals wrapped in sugary-sweet melodies, a record that confirms Crocodiles’ position as a band to watch. They may have calmed down a little, but the bite is still there. Plenty of it.