Solid Little Rock Jams

The Cranes- Wings of Joy

This is a serious review. So only read it if you're in a serious mood.

Imagine that you're walking down the street, it's late out, and you see a decrept burnt out building sprayed with graffit right next to the video store, where you were planning on returning Biodome after a fitful and disturbed viewing. You glance at the movie, glance back at the building, and throw Biodome into the trash. You jimmy open the half-busted wooden door to the building, and slowly creep inside. The walls are painted with pentagrams and anarchy signs and garbage bags torn open by stray cats litter the hallways. You hear a slow, murmering beat coming from a door at the end of the hallway. Just like you threw Biodome out, you throw caution to the wind and burst through the door. Inside you see a group of people stare at you, all of them looking like you've invaded some private ritual. A girl with jet black hair is wailing through a styrofoam cup into what looks like a polaroid camera. A strange, tatooed british limey is sitting in the corner, farting into an accordion. Another man is throwing (Tom) weights onto a keyboard, sending shrill hellish shreiks into the air. Slowly, you back away frightened, but it is too late. You've entered the world of the Cranes.

The Cranes first album, Wings of Joy, is a pretty awesome album considering it's basically the progeny of both My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division. A lot of folk would consider this a goth album (If you solicit me to listen to shit like VNV Nation or Tiger Army or HIM or something, I will hunt Tim Burton down and kill him) but I think this album is really just minimalist C.R.E.E.P-assed shoegaze. Songs like Starblood and Leaves of Summer kind of rock, but in a sort of David Lynch-esque way. Beautiful Sadness gets my award for worst song title ever, but it's haunting strings and meandering keyboard lines are really hypnotic and would be really interesting to see live. Adoration is a pretty awesome jaunt through the deserts of your MIND, while Alison Shaw croons something unintellible but otherwise mesmerizingly spellbinding (Like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.). Compared to albums like Forever, Wings of Joy is pretty stripped down and slow, but it's a great moodsetting album that owesome sort of debt to Brian Eno as well. Wings of Joy is also slightly less dynamic then their other albums but it has a lot more intricate string work and it's more haunting in regards to the overall textures of the songs (Sixth of May is a plodding, shoegazy song that always seems to raise the hair on the back of my neck.). So really, if you like Joy Division, My Bloody Valentie, Yianni: Live at the Acropolis, or any of the other bands I've name-dropped, then you should probably pick up this album. If you like Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive then this album is basically those televised features in SONIC FORM.

In other news, I thought I could wait for Dan to update so that I could slack off for a while, but he's a stupid douchebag and he's waiting in line to pick up a Nintendo Wii! Anyways, I feel like making myself a peanut butter sandwich.

Rating: 8/10 If you don't know why then you should probably read over the review slowly, looking for clues that I've dropped throughout that may hint at the overall meaning of the review.

Download: The Cranes- Adoration