Tuesday 13 October 2009

Vice Interview: Crocodiles

Here is an interview with the band Crocodiles that was intended for the mag and ended up on Viceland.com.

crox

Just like that Cold Cave piece that we put up the other day, this one is from the archives and found itself yellowing and fraying at the edges and crying out to be read. So we heeded its plea and here it is. If you aren't familiar with Crocodiles yet, you must have been locked in cave in Llandudno for the last 12 months and you should go and listen to their shimmering downer hit "Summer of Hate" right now.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far... OK, not really, but about five years ago, I saw a band called The Plot To Blow Up the Eiffel Tower at a grotty little venue called The Vic Inn in Derby. The Vic had, and probably continues to have, its fair share of amazing shows, and Plot were pretty great that night, even if there were only about six people there to see them. If, however, you’d told me then that the band that I had just seen playing spazzy screamo with song titles like "Sometimes I Wish I’d Lost a Leg", "One Stab Deserves Another" and "Reichstag Rock" would, a few years later, resurface peddling a hazy take on percussive Velvets rock cloaked in Jesus & Mary Chain feedback with the pop sensibility of a prime Shadows of Knight cut, I would probably have laughed all the way back down the A52. The fact that Brandon and Charles have managed just that on one of the most complete and listenable debuts of the year makes me glad I am often so wrong.


Vice: Why is every single band I interview right now ex-members of a hardcore band? Whatever happened to true till death?


Brandon Welchez (vocals, programming): I think it's probably boredom. Hardcore is so strict – there are definite musical guidelines and if you step out of them you are criticised. I love all my old hardcore records, but I think it's really dangerous for a genre to not progress – to in fact discourage progression – for 10, 15, or 20 years. I never felt like The Plot were a hardcore band anyway. We were abrasive and noisy enough that we could play a hardcore bill, but those were usually the shows where we got beat up or called fags or whatever. We felt much more of a kinship to bands like Arab on Radar or Six Finger Satellite. In fact, as soon as I got the chance to start a side project, I did the most poppy, wimpy punk-pop band I could, just to shake off the shackles of hardcore and noise. Now with Crocodiles, I feel like we have a blank slate that we can do anything with. We can write hooks and pop melodies, but we can also retain that abrasiveness and even take it further into noise than we ever did with The Plot.


Charles Rowland (guitar, synth): The Plot listened to a lot of everything as well. Birthday Party, girl groups, 60s, Oi!, shoegaze and reggae. Being that there was four of us and the band had been around for so long, we couldn't just change the sound completely. With Crocodiles, we can do what we want and have fun running it through the Croc filter.


Who is that on the cover of your album there? She looks like she’s friends with Charlie [Manson].


Charles: She was. Ruth Ann Moorehouse, Manson follower.


You know if you google "The Crocodiles" you get a band that does covers at weddings?


Charles: Wow. If we were playing a wedding we’d probably do a bunch of 60s covers. The Seeds, Music Machine, Byrds, Creation, Sonny & Cher, Leslie Goe. That kind of stuff.


Brandon: And "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Tammy Wynette.


JAM 69



1 comment:

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