Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Cripple And Casino
Label: Radio Is Down
Released: 2009
Length: 36:33
Rating: 4/5
Alt rock this offbeat? It’s been ages! Free-floating and unburdened, it smashes taboos and tears down barriers. Keeping it simple is its guiding principle. It takes its cues from nobody! Cripple And Casino, a two-year-old band from the Croatian capital, are serving up their self-titled debut.
The story goes something like this. The boss of the American indie label Radio Is Down, based in Olympia (Washington state), stumbled onto the band’s official MySpace page while surfing the web. He was so blown away by what he heard that he took the band under his wing. All they had to do was agree to get material ready for an album in the course of 2008. As we can see, they did. Zagreb is finally waking up. Zagreb, which Rijeka has always outdone when it comes to the quality of real rock coming out of our southern neighbor, can finally brag a little!
Cripple And Casino are a band sworn to garage-style thrashing, with no overthinking. The rhythm section is superior. It dishes out a ton of melody and covers a huge amount of sonic space, thanks to a witty, active bass guitar. It’s cranked up to a thick rattle that often works as a guitar chord. Above the dynamics of the rhythm section hover the vocals and the guitar. Both are sworn to deliberately hunting for disharmony. In plain words: when the guitar plays a certain line, the vocals go looking for their own dissonant line off to the side of it, and that creates the necessary, desired atmosphere of uncompromising punk energy, debauchery and scandal. The best example, and a downright special one at that, hides in the song These Equations. The band doesn’t stick to one simple template of a single rhythm and a single guitar phrase. The songs stand out for their dynamics, with repeated jerky transitions that fan the punch, and entire rhythm changes can be woven into a song, creating a whole new mood (Movie Star, Hormones).
The fact that the band is young, with practically no real experience (in terms of performing and working in a studio), doesn’t mean they lack innate talent or that the chemistry isn’t there. Cripple And Casino are furious and unbridled. With their debut they unmistakably prove that in a crowd of similar alternative-minded bands, you can still carve out enough room to express yourself and secure a recognizable style and sound. And the album “Cripple And Casino” is a kick in the right direction in that respect!
On top of that, Cripple And Casino are a band with intelligent lyrics. Look closer and they’re devoted to mocking the fragility and transience of the human race. Nothing can fulfill us. Only death. And yet we run around paranoid, wanting to prove ourselves and beat obstacles set at the edge of what’s possible, hiding in dark and safe little holes and feeding on the artificial messaging of a parallel world we’ve built on our own illusions. We’re haunted by the fact of our mortality, which we refuse to come to terms with. That’s why we’re like a virus. Destructive. To ourselves and to everything around us. Humans are simply born under an unlucky star.
Enough of these hints. Cripple And Casino offer 10 songs that boast a unique energy. The range of expression their way of making music allows stretches roughly across garage punk rock thrashing and “noise” fury (Particles), and a few tricks even lean on post punk approaches. Above all, it’s the vocals of singer Petra that are the band’s secret weapon. Petra’s approach fits Cripple And Casino like a glove. Her singing can be annoyingly obnoxious, teasing, angry and biting, stoned and swaggering, or she goes for a stubbornly straight-ahead howl that can make every hair on your skin stand at attention. This girl is the real deal!
The debut from Cripple And Casino is more than a successfully laid foundation stone on which the band can safely and confidently build its future musical vision. The debut alone proves that Cripple And Casino successfully defy being pigeonholed as “already heard and known”, even though listening might make you brush up against acts like Jawbox or The Jesus Lizards, but that’s only a rough reference for all of you looking for where the dog is roughly buried when we talk about Cripple And Casino. As I said. With this debut, the new band comes across as simple, fresh, witty, inspired and, most importantly, hungry to prove themselves and create without pressure. Following the huge fact of playing and writing on the “first ball”. The sound is damn successfully raw and garaged-out, truly alive and pulsing in its recognizable sermon. This is a band that will have plenty more interesting things to offer in the future, so don’t let them out of your sight. Sorry. Out of your ears.
Lineup
Petra – vocals
Darko – guitar
Zec – bass guitar
Marko – drums
Production
Cripple And Casino
Tracklist
1. Movie Star
2. Hormones
3. You’ll Be A Dragon Again
4. Hot Air Balloons
5. Particles
6. Intro
7. Isuzu
8. Do My Job Right
9. These Equations
10. Crossroad
