you should probably listen to this : crocodiles

wow, this is certainly an entry i never imagined writing. well, maybe for like, 5 minutes last year i might have. but after their pretentious display of douchebaggy bravado last year at the empty bottle, i had sworn myself off of this san francisco based rock duo. i mean, hell, of course i loved their breakout single "i wanna kill." and "neon jesus" or whatever track it was that no age gave em props for in 08, which essentially was the driving force behind their catapult into the blogger spotlight for 3 minutes.

anyway. i always confuse crocodiles with girls. it's the wavves syndrome. it's like, 'whoa look how bare bones and INDIE and DIFFERENT this band is! it's so bare and simplistic. WHO WOULDA THOUGHT?' when really, it's a couple young cocky dudes who do too many drugs that happen to know how to knock off jesus mary chain or whatever 'surf rock' irony flavor of the week throwback genre happens to be in style.

ok. i'm spouting an abundance of haterade and not enough righteousness, which is essentially the point of this posting (believe it or not). ok, so i had their first album. and i liked 2 or 3 songs. and then i even supported their show at the bottle when they opened up for holy fuck last summer. but as i told dan and alexi of the handsome furs (who happened to be in attendance of this particular show), my personal review of their hipster we're-too-cool-for-our-fans motif parade was, 'they were ok, but mostly just really faggy.' i didn't mean that in any sort of homophobic context of course, i just had been watching too much of the office and adapted steve carrel speak for the hell of it. but yes, they were faggy extreme. tight pants. SUNGLASSES (at eleven fucking pm people). one dude played guitar. one sang and danced around behind a drum machine. hardly the performance of a lifetime.

anyway. tangent rant aside. . .

when my editor emailed a blast full of assignments a few weeks ago, i volunteered to review these dudes' newest release for two reasons. 1) i thought it would be fun as hell to tear them apart. 2) i hadn't gotten shit assigned to me in a month so i just took on whatever they would give me. 3 weeks later, i get an email from my editor with this album's press leak. for the hell of it, i clicked play outta curiosity while on a stroll in logan square yesterday. thought i'd wind up getting bored and just cram a few listens in the day before the deadline in 3 weeks.

instead. . . it's all the same as before. (reverby, big echoes, lazy vocals and jesus mary chain rip off). but, this time around it's not boring. this time the hooks are a bit tighter. the riffs are more dead on. there are actually melodies present. it's not just a bunch of stupid pretentious noise. it's actual real rock music! and you know what, as big of a sucker as i am for the electro-dance-hip hop craze, (i mean and i am, duh), i can only stomach xyz listens of 'chillwave' or 'indie electro ______' before i crave some guitars and good old fashioned rock music. i can't even remember the last 'rock' record i've listened to. not indie, not electro, not pop, no prefaced gimmick-rock. just rock. and this is it. the new record is called Sleep Forever and it's 8 tracks of concise, decent, barebone rock music. it's nothing ground breaking or new, by any means. but it's an enjoyable, albeit temporary, distraction from whatever kanye west is tweeting about this week.

so yeah, when this shit drops on 9/14 (or when you ask me to burn you a copy), you should probably listen to the crocodiles. even if only for a spin or two. sometimes the basics are the most refreshing. a cleanse of the hipster palette, if you will.