Crash City Saints’ “Are You Free?” is a dancey shoegaze masterpiece

By Misc Contributor

Ok, so I’ve got to be honest. I’m usually not as familiar with shoegaze bands as I should be, so this one’s a little different for me. On top of that, I’m more biased than usual on this review. Crash City Saints is a shoegaze band based out of Kalamazoo, MI, and I actually used to play in a band with their bassist, Elliott Skjordal.(I dare you to try and find the really subpar EP we released with that band, or better yet, I dare you to try and pronounce Elliott’s last name correctly)

Knowing those things, there are probably a plethora of better people to talk about this album, but when Elliott told me Crash City Saints was gearing up to release an album for the first time in seven years and that this album was initially based on the concept of doing a shoegaze Quadrophenia, I knew the good people who read Tuned Up needed to hear about this. Because of my bias, I plan to keep this review relatively short and have included links to some other, more unbiased, reviews below.

Are You Free? Is Crash City Saints follow up to their 2010 release Glow in the Dark Music, and it loosely tells a coming-of-age narrative about a boy from a small town raised on underground music. The narrative isn’t necessarily made explicitly clear, but that’s perfectly OK. As someone who grew up in middle-of-nowhere Indiana trying to search out underground music, I know the concept is ripe with inspiration. The songs follow through on the concept to give the listener some great music that pays homage to past bands without becoming pastiche.

The tunes vary from short instrumental experimentation tracks like “Weirdos Need Love Too” or “It’s Not a Party Until Someone Breaks Your Heart,” to hook driven songs with more pop sensibilities like “There’s No School Tomorrow” or “Ice Cream Headache” to heavier distorted tunes with quasi-industrial vibes like “Use Once Then Dispose” or “Annabelle,” but there is common sonic thread tying it all together.

What I love in particular about this album is how the band was able to capture grooves that will move people while still retaining the ethereal otherness of shoegaze music. It’s a match made in heaven. Shoegaze music is supposed to leave room for people to think. It’s a noisy and sometimes messy form of contemplation for both the artist and the listener. The songs on Are You Free? provide the listener with that room for the mind to activate, but the grooves also definitely engage the body – urging the listener to move. This juxtaposition reminds me of a BBC interview I heard with John Lyndon from the early days of Public Image Ltd., talking about what they were striving to create was “danceable noise.” While Are You Free? is definitely much less avant-garde than early P.i.L., I feel as though the album achieves the goal of “danceable noise” quite successfully. If you’re operating in the same general creative area as P.i.L. you’re doing something right in my book. But don’t take the word of a former bandmate, see what other people have to say about the album: