Crocodiles have been subletting their sound from the Jesus and Mary Chain since their full-length debut in 2009. Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell continue to crash at the Reid brothers’ pad for the first half of their fifth album, but by side two of Boys, they’re finally ready to move out. Maybe it will be good for them; this flat was getting pretty musty anyway.
Boys has the requisite reverb and guitar fuzz and Welchez talk-singing about life "in the clubs, on them drugs." The first few songs are living-on-the-edge narratives that would sound way more badass were they not discredited by clichés like "cold as ice" and "sharp like razorblades." It also doesn’t help how heavily they borrow from badasses who came before them. There’s a big Ringo drum fill in "Foolin’ Around" that is so recognizable it takes away from anything original that might be going on around it. And when Welchez delivers the phrase "down on the street" in "Crybaby Demon", you can almost hear his rationale during a corporate presentation: "The Stooges sang a song called ‘Down on the Street’, so if we plop that phrase into this song here, we can optimize our badass market viability."
The irony is that there was no board of directors to impress with Boys. It’s being released on the Zoo Music imprint, which Welchez runs with his wife, Dum Dum Girls frontwoman Dee Dee Penny. (The album was also made possible by a PledgeMusic campaign.) So why do Crocodiles end up sounding like the world’s safest dangerous band? Maybe because as tenants of the Reids’, they don’t want to rearrange too much? Maybe they want to ease their fans into their new sound?
Whatever the reason, by the fifth track, when Welchez asks, "Hey, boy! Why you gotta be so hard?" he might as well be posing this question to himself, as he takes off his leather jacket and begins to explore the emotions and rhythms of recording in Mexico City. It’s almost as if the first half of the album is comprised of songs that Crocodiles had finished writing by the time they got to the studio, and the second half is all of the stuff that they came up with while they were there. And this exploratory spirit is where Boys finds its strength.
All cool guy posturing is gone by the time they get to "Blue", a wispy melody that recalls the Zombies. This might be the most honest thing Crocodiles have recorded yet, with lyrics like, "Years chained up in shame, nothing but family to blame/ Now when darkness arrives it swallows all that lived inside." Also noteworthy is the interplay between the polished pop structure and the queasy guitar on "Peroxide Hearts". It's unclear what they are going for with the song "Transylvania", which seems to broach themes of trans-identity. The spirit of the song is reverent and anthemic, but lines like "sometimes it's such a drag to be a man" miss the mark, unless the mark was groan-inducing puns. Incidentally, the song's chorus may be the catchiest thing on Boys, and whatever else it represents, it shows us Crocodiles actively moving outside of their comfort zone.
The same goes for the syncopated rhythms they put under numbers like "Kool TV" and album closer "Don’t Look Up". Whether this was the influence of producer Martin Thulin, the band soaking up their environs in Mexico City, or a little bit of both, it’s a winning combination. Crocodiles have referred to this new sound as salsa-punk and "muy chingón!" which, roughly translated, means "fucking awesome" in Spanish. They don’t quite get the salsa part right, but that’s what makes this unique. Some of the most inventive music can come from people not quite understanding a different kind of music: The fact that this braver experimentalism rounds out an album that begins with old formulaic fuzz provides hope that the next Crocodiles release will actually be fucking awesome.
