Premiere: Mad Crush fight the good fight on self-titled debut album
Indie-folk duo ready an impressive debut album.
We’ve all got a past. We can either tread water and ultimately drown or swallow it down and absorb it into our blood stream. Amidst such a furious, critical process, the seasons rise and fall and clash upon each other in iron-struck blows. Senses are numbed, and there’s absolutely no conceivable way out ⏤ allowing the metaphorical catacombs to multiply and wriggle its tentacles between layers of time. Music can be the proper healing agent, of course, unraveling the complex, stealthily-bound contraptions that serve only to confine and choke. “I can’t let go of the past,” Mad Crush‘s John Elderkin sings on essential cut “My Pre-Existing Conditions,” framed around the ongoing healthcare debate but scrawled more intimately, from the band’s self-titled debut LP, out this Friday (November 16).
Mad Crush floats between airy acoustic orbits and is greatly indebted to Elderkin’s various romantic entanglements through the years, as well as previous work with The Popes, on a rock opera with another band called ¡Moonbeams No Mas! and on a sequel to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust record. “Having pulled that off, I decided to try the equivalent of an ongoing Netflix or HBO show, focused on the same main characters over time,” Elderkin tells B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the album in-full today. “I’d been listening to a lot of June Carter, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, and that was my jumping-off point with the songs and stories. Now, Joanna and I are like characters that I try to place in new situations as I write new songs.”
Singer and violinist, Joanna Sattin, who has worked with everyone from Ray Charles and Judy Collins to Jay Z, demonstrates extraordinary, raw power, especially when taking lead on “Northern Lights.” It’s her first reign of lead vocals ever in her career, and the star-lit ballad permits her to tap into a wealth of expert storytelling. “Time for a Love Song?” brings the dry wit, tugging love with sly rebellion, which gives a ripe payoff with “Stay in Bed,” a charming rendezvous between the sheets. From beginning to end, there is a theatrical bravado to the record, sewn with real human truths of romance’s exhilarating highs and troubling, crippling lows.
Musically, the all-too-brief seven-song album is a hearty, well-rounded swell of songcraft. The band of players includes Mark Whelan (electric guitar), Laura Thomas of the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle (violin) and drummer Chuck Garrison (formerly of Superchunk, Pipe and Zen Frisbee). Such a swatch of pedigrees allows Elderkin and Sattin to achieve an incredible level of heart, displayed through caring arrangements that prick the skin and leave you breathless. “My favorite aspect of this band is that everyone brings their influences, but when people make up their parts and style their singing, we never begin with a reference point. So, maybe Laura is thinking of a hint of classical while Chuck is hearing primitive and sharp,” explains Elderkin, whose voice is often scarred, tattered yet brawny. “We start wherever we start, and then as a group, we work through whatever the song wants. I think that’s how we found a ‘sound’ without ever naming one. I know bands are always supposed to do this, but with this group and our wide interests, it’s awesome to see where ideas naturally go without lots of direction or ‘influences.'”
Throughout Mad Crush, Elderkin, Sattin and company play to their strengths while subsequently prancing outside the box to uncover new shades of skillful interpretations. Notably, the record doesn’t rely on traditional drum work to heighten the intensity of strings and piano. Instead, Garrison flips conventions rather sheepishly. “We had to work relatively quickly while recording, and some of the best percussion on the record came as a result of Chuck grabbing random noisemakers or drums he’d spot hanging on the studio walls whenever we walked in,” Elderkin says. “He’d just take something, fiddle around for a moment, then go for it. Immediately we had something fresh as we got to work.”
Listen below:
Photo Credit: Chris Florio
