Available on: Fiction LP

Ah, Crystal Castles: mess of my age. So oft misunderstood, so frequently incorrectly referred-to, and as FACT readers, we hate nothing more than that. They’ve been called 8-bit when it’s empirically clear that they’re not. They’ve been described as a noise band when they’re really just a bit rough. They’ve been called the most exciting band in the world when that accolade obviously goes to Taio Cruz. So what are they, really?

Well, they were a key part of the identity of nu-ravers and the kind of girls who wore sunglasses in clubs. They were nestled in on the Facebook music lists of people from Peterborough who say Paris is their favourite thing, right there between Biffy Clyro and David Bowie (these kinds of people always had the list arranged alphabetically because they just copied their iPod artist list verbatim). They were Canadian! They released a 7-inch made of pure ketamine which sold well. They were hip, is what I’m trying to say.

But they were always clever. And with this they’ve proven it.

‘Doe Deer’ is the only remnant of the old Crystal Castles that gave us ‘Alice Practice’. Short and unpleasant, it’s like that Nirvana song ‘Tourettes’, a brief bit of punctuation between other longer, more intelligent works, to keep you on your toes. It’s the only point on the album in which Alice is really irritating, and probably deliberately. ‘Baptism’ is one of the most immediately obviously great tracks on the album. It features these huge expanses of wordless fiddling on two or three notes, occasionally broken up with sudden washes of oceanic synths, and Alice in the background screaming.

One of the best things David Byrne’s written in recent years was this short story about him sitting in a shopping centre. He notices people running and screaming, and slowly this gigantic clear, plastic sack full to bursting with polystyrene cups rolls around the corner, totally filling the space, emitting this generic “rock” sound; just distortion and thrashy noise. Three years after reading that piece, ‘Year of Silence’ on this album instantly brought it back to me. It sounds just like that cup monster would. It slowly oozes, slipping over all around you, rolling unswervingly, wave after wave, unstoppably ugly.

Elsewhere the album is crystalline and ethereal. ‘Suffocation’ sounds like echoes from a multi-story at night. The music throughout the album is alternately murky and sullen, then scuzzy and roaring. Every few minutes you get a colourful burst of synths trickling over the track, before it snaps back into its rigid, loose-yet-tight groove, like on ‘Pap Smear’. Lots of different ideas come into play, all of them freshly surprising. On ‘Intimate’ there’s this sound which sounds like the beeps of a heart monitor, slowly falling down then going crazy when the beat starts. ‘Not in Love’ almost sounds like a hauntology record at the start. Final track ‘I Am Made of Chalk’ sounds like an iceberg cracking apart, before it settles into slush at the very end of the album.

Karin Dreijer Anderson’s ghost is all over this record. The vocals are distant and twisted, and Alice’s voice is pushed further and further away from its human origin, up to the point where on tracks like ‘Vietnam’ it becomes totally unrecognisable. The album isn’t about misery or anger, but just about alienation (all punk is about alienation). The over-production of her voice demonstrates this beautifully; technology making us lose the sense of ourselves. Crystal Castles live gigs express this, too, as Alice writhes around tied up in mic cords.

I like this album. I like that recently pop stars have returned to the trend of getting better with subsequent albums. Not so long ago, the Kooks or whoever would release their slab-of-shite debuts and then mercifully fade off into nothing. But Crystal Castles seem to really have a sense of progression with this. ‘Doe Deer’ is just a flashback, a 100-second note to the past: You were good, you were fun, you were nasty, but the time has come to put away childish things.

James Hampson