The best way to act like a caveman is to live deep inside a cave, which is where A Cricket in Times Square have landed: their garage-rock guitars are run through shoegazer pedals and effects and magnified until they sound not like a noise, but a space-- a shadowy, cavernous rock chamber that threatens to drain all color from the music until they're left with nothing but echoes.
Volume alone doesn't make for great rock music, and A Cricket in Times Square take a risk on their debut album by ditching precision and almost rendering themselves faceless. They hit the usual reference points-- from the guitar jams of a "Sister Ray" to the massive shoegaze of Bailter Space-- so the trick is to set themselves apart from their forebearers. Frontman Michael Tyler often drowns his vocals by shouting into the winds, rendering himself almost anonymous. You can hear his space-weary voice more clearly on the slow numbers. He gets an extended showcase on "Outliving Your Shadow", a drowsy slow dance on which he sounds like he's drooling on his pillow; the last half of the song jerks awake with an extended guitar solo that wails and doubles up on itself.
But even as the guitars try to crush the album, the band's songwriting triumphs. Each track is a distinct composition, from the climbing riffs of "Careless" or the ominous two-note figure that repeats through "5 1/2-Minute Hallway", chased by eerie leather-winged-bird noises that recall early Pink Floyd. In the quiet-to-loud Galaxie 500 dreaminess of "Mourning Son", the chorus hangs on like a battleship in high seas while the band struggles to bash it off course, and the frenetic melody of "Everything Known About Medicines" hits the highest energy mark, setting off eruptions at every chorus.
Other effects-heavy guitar bands may be more psychedelic, outro or spastic, but by taking a straighter approach to their wall of sound they play to their strength: the gigantic melodies. The band's pedal fetish doesn't get in the way of songwriting, and each wash of noise yields a memorable tune. It's not clear why they named themselves after a children's book, except that the image of a cricket chirping in the middle of skyscrapers matches the way they sound like they're shouting into a vast expanse. In spite of the static, their message hits the mark.
