CRIPPLE AND CASINO – s/t
(CD, Radio is Down)
I had two first thoughts when
I popped this CD into my player. The one was: “Hm, a label from the
Washington” and then “sounds great, somewhat like Analena”. Turns
out Cripple and Casino hail from Croatia and the label found them via
myspace and that they are close friends with Analena as well. Probably, the
internet is good for something, aside from porn and stupidity. Or should
that read pr0n and wtf? Let’s not get into that. The ranting forming up on
the horizon of my mind should be reserved for the “is that really your
life?” segment of this website. Back to the music, please: Cripple and
Casino play an energizing, radiating kind of post-hardcore that I am glad to
hear is still around. The kind that always dances around melodies, touching
them here and there but never falling into straight forward harmonies, as a
sort of political principle, that is: let’s not be confused with westcoast
melodic punk come mainstream rock. Definitely, putting the words mainstream
and punk into one genre name points to all that is wrong with punkrock these
days. Anyway, bands like Cripple and Casino want to keep the flame alive and
that is good (cheack out In*Sane
on this as well).
There is a driving, rumbling
beat that runs through all songs, no matter how many breaks or false starts
they build into the song. The guitar is sometimes edgy, sometimes affluent
with high pitched notes or weird chords, sometimes also goes straight into
power chords (“Particles” or “Intro”) while the bass and drums lay a
fundament of beats that range from straight forward racing to an almost
reggae stance. These dynamics between straight energetic punk and weird
jangling postcore make for the main fascination of all the songs. You may
wiggle your head during the softer spots knowing that an energetic release
will come sooner or later to help you go bezerk on the dancefloor, if you
want to. After all it is still about punkrock. Never forget, the whole album
starts with the sound of a motor revving up, so you know what you are in
for.
Petra, the singer, screams and
shouts and moans and sings, whatever style seems fit, about the troubles of
our modern day existence in between the impetus of media content, the
overall coldness of the capitalist system and about the will and guts and
power it takes to keep up being an individual in these circumstances. About
how hard it is sometimes to just get up in the morning and face live as it
has turned out. And that after all it is the personal relationships with
people, who you get to know on a very intimate basis, are the things that
count in life. And that those hurt the most, if they fail, break up or turn
out to be false. Don’t worry, musically this is (still) nowhere close to
what used to be great about Gossip but has turned so bland and uninteresting
once fame hit them and they turned to lifestyle and glamour instead of
substance.
I prefer Cripple and Casino a
lot because with them I feel an honesty and realness in the music that is
unfortunately amiss in 99.9 % of all other music around. (and which is, it
seems, one of my basic criteria for music these days…) Don’t get me
wrong, there is a lot of potential in Cripple and Casino and their
self-titled debut is great in many ways, as described above, but I rather
get my mind blown in a small room with 50 kids dancing in a frenzy than
stand together with 5000 bland eyed part-time alternative rockers in a
non-descript mainstream music ballroom. Maybe this is very egoistic of me,
to demand for bands that I like to stay small, but then again, I wish all of
them (including Gossip) the best of luck and lots of money and whatever they
believe their heart desires. In the meantime I will re-direct my focus to
the next small source of energy and dedication to find what I want.
Finally, there is but one
question left for me: why are there randomly letters missing in the lyric
sheet? Seems as if there was some problem with “tt” and “ft” but
then also a random “h” and ever so on. Clever ploy to make people more
interested or trouble with the layout / graphics program? Works for me.
