The Creepy Crawlies Get Buried!

The track chugs out a bass line to the kick of the beat. Shimmering layers behind, sway and fall until the lamenting male vocal; interesting lyric and countering feminine caress. Exquisitely produced and arranged to accommodate screeching guitars and panoramic atmospheric soundscapes, this is Get Buried! by The Creepy Crawlies, a pining indie ballad that tilts on the seam between oppressive understatement and optimistic suggestion. The chorus is cognitive but effective, ‘Let’s let those bad feelings get buried again,’ the contrast between Chris Donlon’s desperately affecting coo and band-mate Kate’s smooth yet understated accompaniment provide a sound, unmistakably their own. We may well have found the soundtrack to Diablo Cody’s next movie. This is the first single to be released of their debut LP also called Get Buried!, and with its undoubted ‘single’ potential this must have been the right move, mustn’t it?

I have to ask the question and who knows who chose this as the first single – was it the band? I mean, by all commonly accepted rules and guidelines this was absolutely the obvious choice (if not the only choice), but for what purpose? I guess the hypothesis is that you release the most accessible track on the album, therefore, generating greater interest, fan-base etc. etc. and maybe, consequently increasing album sales. All very sensible, you would think. How about after the album is released though? There is no longer a veil of unknowing about the greater aspects of the band then. We find out that this track was in fact the exception to the sound, not the rule. It’s not that expectations weren’t fulfilled, it’s rather that the expectations are irrelevant. What has been created is an unsustainable, adrenaline rush followed by a confusing come down most junkies couldn’t manage.

It’s understandable, and I do understand the difficulty with getting recognised as a band. With the introduction of social media it can in certain respects become even more difficult with the sheer amount of music that is now readily available for consumption. Many, many artists, I’m sure, get lost within the plethora of Myspace pages and Soundcloud uploads so it is important to make a statement. But, consider this. If your work is profoundly important or you have enough momentum to already expose yourselves to the media (like us) then you don’t need just one single catch our attention. Especially if it’s misleading in the sense that, of all the cohesiveness that the record contains this is the one anomaly and you choose this to be the lead single.

The expansive sound of Get Buried!, becomes somewhat of a misconception. The very next track, Kick Yr Blues is rather more understated, with its bedroom/basement grooves, ice-cream vocals and post-punk guitars. This even, would have been a preferable release – a more relevant and concentrated version of their sound. They create, more often than amiable pop tracks; scrappy, angst-ridden lo-fi rhythms upon which they can extract their cursory perspective. Not Thinking, has the punk spirit imbedded to the core – disillusionment pervades the lyric in their abandoning measures, ‘Caution is a coffin, that you’ve come to respect,’ – and you know that that pisses them off.

Get Buried! sort of misses the point of the record, they aren’t pissed at anything - they’re fucking high - and it flounders at the less meaningful edge of their genre. What you discover after Get Buried! (the lead track) is a cacophony of distortion, biting lyrics, witty considerations and personal angers which are delivered with genuine spirit. The subject matter is desperately personal and it’s not that Get Buried! isn’t a good track, it really is. It’s just an inappropriate cop out. There’s far more in the depth of their character, and much greater value in the heart of the record than in an oddly placed single. You may think that by garnering attention it may lead people to find a great record beneath, and they would, it’s just that if they adore Get Buried!, they aren’t going to find a single comparative moment after.

This is a band with a message, an opinion and a purpose which has found a component of its genre as yet undiscovered. You have to respect the innovation and the bi-polar energy of their neon-beige debut. Often, on tracks like Mice In The Snow, Donlon sneers ‘I don’t care’, always directing the vocal at the subjective ‘you’ in the story. The ironic Underground lays a sarcastic tirade against ambition and belief with the female vocal an always uplifting presence.Songs often find many personalities within themselves and transform into ad-hoc missionaries against traditional song-form. Mollie the Maggot Part I being the perfect example, initially, downbeat and almost unconscious in its opening, it explodes into a nod-able rhythmic saga. You encounter very little self-awareness or paranoia, perhaps strange for such a personal album - it’s very self-assured in fact. The only perspective to which I became frustrated was actually the lack of any song led by the female vocal. They are a perfect combination in tandem but I feel it’s an aspect which they can exploit further perhaps. I never became weary of the delicate lines and more measured delivery of femininity, however, the relentlessness of Chris Donlon on his mission to express all that was possible became a little wearying eventually.  

Anyone who listens to the record can clearly hear the marketability of Get Buried! and I feel it’s probably a nervous tick which the music industry has developed in its entirety – the desperate need the reveal something much better protected. I just believe that if a band uses a lead single to epitomise their sound rather than something perhaps less prominent then it will benefit their longevity. Don’t they believe enough in the great work they did elsewhere on the record? People could discover the true lo-fi punk of The Creepy Crawlies and fall in love with a record of that ilk. Instead the pop-ists will pounce upon one track, denounce the record and leave the husk to blow away with the winds of time. Damn shame.