Crystal Stilts - In Love With Oblivion

‘In Love With Oblivion’ is about as cinematic as music can get. ‘Silver Sun’ goes as far as opening with the sound of screeching tyres and the rest of the album follows suit. You can almost see a James Dean-like protagonist approaching the centre of a cinema screen in a Ford Consul, the blazing sun reflecting on the car’s front; everything many might regard as the epitome of cool. Crystal Stilts’ introduced a tight, moody garage sound ‘Alight Of Night’, which has expanded into a Ray Ban, leather jacket-wearing image of retro. The whole of the band’s second album gives you this very vivid, vintage image and it’s what gives an otherwise trivial record some much-needed purpose.

The sole problem with this album is its impenetrability; lyrics accompanying Brad Hargett’s deep, sullen voice carry little significance – their aim is more to back up the effervescent artistry, the dreamy imagery that conjures itself up next to the songs. There’s more to marvel in when it comes to the musicianship however, which highlights considerable progression from that of the debut. JB Townsend’s guitar tones are razor-sharp and help to dictate the rhythm of the album’s more up-tempo numbers; ‘Shake The Shackles’ and ‘Death Is What We Live For’ standing out amongst a crowd of pensive, relatively withdrawn efforts, largely thanks to Townsend’s jagged guitars.

Opener ‘Sycamore Tree’ is a straight-up homage to all of the band’s endless list of influences; from contemporary, scuzzy punk rock to the specific appeal of bands like C86 and The Velvet Underground. The song itself is quite the statement; not only does it wears its influences like a badge crest, its pace is relentless, giving you little time to take it all in. Contrast this to the sedated, drug-fulled haze that is ‘Alien Rivers’ and you begin to appreciate how artfully The Stilts’ rhythm sections swings from one branch of sound to the other. Variation and wealth of ideas was the debut’s strong point and ‘In Love With Oblivion’ takes careful note of that, before following a similar routine.

One asset this record can boast over its predecessor is an appreciation of melody: Hargett’s vocals no longer sound monotonous and merely bleak; instead, we hear him reach difficult notes on the shimmering ‘Precarious Stair’ and the band even go as far as delivering a clean, accessible rock n’ roll song with ‘Flying Into The Sun’. No longer concerned with Joy Division comparisons – because any applied to this album would be ludicrous – Crystal Stilts have “shaken off the shackles” that trudged alongside their debut record. Whilst showing an appreciation of other musical decades and movements, they set themselves apart from the crop of American, Garage-indebted rock bands that emerged two or three years previous.