Thought I needed a q-tip when I first heard Crusades-- record sounded muddy. Bad rip? Speakers fucking with me? Nah. The perennially ahead-of-the-curve Plastic Constellations' third album is just their first on a cushy budget, so it's easy to confuse the beefy high-fidelity for some Frenchkiss engineer's mistake. Anyone who listened carefully to Mazatlan and Let's War-- living wage gigs for minor-league labels-- caught making-do vibrations; between guitars chugged thin, drums played loud but hit weak, parts got buried or stood out bull's-eye obvious. But here the band made like architects and turned its limitations into resources, fattening with volume and part-doubling in lieu of reverb and filters. Their effort amounts to a convincing facsimile of a high school punk show for the ages.
So cut the "they only know one dynamic!" guff and relish the hugeness of "Phoenix and the Faultline"'s chordal introduction. Can we take a minute to acknowledge the big stupid gloriousness of standalone guitar chords? The Constys give us only six seconds before launching into a Manute Bol of a hook-- a lanky, impossibly long eighth-note riff that shouldn't be half as catchy, considering its length. The song paces Crusades, which hammers track upon track of staunchly guitar-centric riff-rock. "The guitars will make the Earth shake," boasts "Quixote". Hardly-- Sunn O))) these guys ain't-- but that track's piano-dripping trapeze act of a chorus might raise a few dead, while "Iron City Jungles" aims its jackknifing guitars with riot-inciting intent.
Here's a band that lives and dies by anthemic riffs, yet understands perfectly the hollowness of their gestures. Even (or especially) Crusades' best licks have difficulty connecting with their rank-and-file underpinnings. "Sancho Panza"'s Big Harmony chorus refuses resolution, alienating itself from the verse, but in a winning way. Swinging "Men in Dark Times"'s triumphant outro is like taking guacamole on your turkey-and-swiss-- terrible idea, hard to refuse. But conviction and technical certainty enable Plastic Constellations to play off, as a kind of no-regrets transient indulgence, the chiffon rapture of even their most blustery lines.
Anyway, rarely do albums come this taut anymore-- 35 minutes, no acoustic pussyfooting or tortoise-tempo sensitive moments. Yes, Crusades is a consistent album, staggeringly so. Ha, no see that's not an inherently good thing! I'll shy from "heard it once, heard it all" derision, but Crusades corrects some of Mazatlan's most compelling failings, like its done-on-the-cheap warmth or its penchant for sloppy genre-hopping. Instead we get expertness in place of exuberance, a trade off even green-faced basement-rehearsing post-punk wunderkinds must make eventually. So how to subsume the 20-something set without estranging the kids? Learn some dynamics I guess.
