Crochet

Photo Cred 📸: @danielleriot

There’s something about a young band that’s just different. Toru Okada, Father Figure, Merchant Ships, youthful exuberance has long been the cauldron from which fantastic music has been brewed. A specific point of view is communicated and it’s one that is unabashed in its honesty, passion, and conviction. Crochet are that young band, and with “Birth Piece” they’re further cementing a time honored tradition in Screamo. The kids are going to be alright.

“Centennial” certainly sets the tone, its underlying thin-string plucked melody wanders in a haunting fashion before meeting a splash of symbols, with a spoken word piece telling a story that feels too close to home in its honesty. This narrative will be brought back a few times in the album. A feeling of longing and anticipation spoken through the anxieties that feel trapped between them. “Unsex Pledge” immediately greets you with a wall of pushing drums and panicked riffs, as concurrent vocals sprint and weave through chaotic instrumentation. Capturing this unnamable push and pull of wanting and feeling worthless, climaxing with the lyrics If I ever got the chance to tell you how I truly feel / nothing would change.

Warbling, noodley riffs compliment despondent bass lines, as chorale-d screams meet again. The beginning of ‘Watcher-Heretic” reminds me of a gentler Love Lost But Not Forgotten deep cut. Sweeping, post-rock reminiscent guitars, loudly play over background shouted vocals, like the last ravings of someone trapped under 6 feet of snow, the distance feels so terrifying. A tremulous bassline bleats, amongst a marched crawl of finger tapping and drumming, as the screamed vocals keep in lock step, building to a crescendoed lamentation of I won't reduce myself to begging / but I don't have the strength to tell you how much I love you / (we won't return to where we once were / I won't come home.) before abruptly cutting out. “Gibusong” oddly enough beginning with a giggle kicks into a malicious almost danceable composition, while still keeping the sonic nature of the album at its core, its bounding midsection has a thumping bassline like feet on hot coals, leading into elongated  strums and slides decorate the shrill cries of I don't know if I'm talking to myself when I ask where you've been.

 “Ancient Roman Candle” both further showcases the young band's talent for crafting emotionally dense and massive arrangements. The longest track on the album is easily the most intense, slowly winding its way through a solo guitar riff, while random news broadcasts rattle off bits and bobs of information until the rest of the instruments seem to come alive and join it. Suddenly everything screams to life as the guitars sweep up and the drum widens its swing to connect with intensively shrieking vocals agonizing over a lost friend. Closing track  “Friends Who Sit And Breathe” almost upends the tone of the album entirely, it becomes evil, dissonant, heavy, gnashing and violent. A last showing of everything the album has built to, this exultation is tethered to a frantically howling saxophone, before sinking into noise and then utter silence.

I have been waiting for this one. Crochet have been performing just shy of a year, and up until this past Friday, we’ve only had (excellent) live videos to go off. Now with “Birth Piece” everything they’ve been honing the last 11 odd months are distilled into a fantastic debut album. Las Vegas has really been offering us great things, and with Crochet, I can only be even more excited about what may come next. We look forward to what they have in store for us next.

Check out their Bandcamp here: Crochet

Writer : @letsgetpivotal

Editor : @just_reidz

02/20/23