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Crystal Castles - 'Celestica'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:33 UK time, Thursday, 24 June 2010

Crystal Castles

Not for the first time, I find myself lost. Having settled down to give this highly-rated new song from a notorious, opinion-dividing, confrontational electro duo a quick once-over, I find I'm unable to take the whole thing in, because it's almost overwhelmingly mournful.

To distract from the chilly dark haze, I retreat, curling into a ball around one line, and attempting to decipher it, as if this is somehow the key to the entire endeavour. As if this cold, hissy wail of repressed pain is like a crossword puzzle AND a frosty beat encounter rolled into one, hand-made by people who look like they could use a good square meal and some vitamin D.

So while Alice Glass, uh, glassily calls out from some ghost dimension, I'm sitting here, making myself work out how to hear the line "do you pray with your eyes closed, naturally?"

Is it one whole question? Does Alice want to know if the act of prayer is so deeply ingrained in someone's consciousness that they become unable to talk to their creator without automatically retreating to an internal world?

Or is it a question and answer: "do you pray with your eyes closed?", and then the reply, "naturally."

I don't know the answer, I might add, but thinking about it is keeping me safe from getting washed away in all the sadness.

( It's grave.)

As is often the way of things, it's these bits which stick in the mind that pack the most punch. An ambiguous phrase, an incongruous noise, that kind of thing., Even the slightly ham-fisted mixing adds life to the picture. An arresting, churning wafty synth pad is a wonderful thing, but it's too clinical, too cloudy to get to grips with emotionally, over the course of a minutes-long pop song, even if it's been chopped into a rhythm. What you need is the tiny imperfections, the bits that make it feel truthful.

Like the little hiss that arrives just before Alice starts singing. It's like her ghostly presence has entered the room, and transforms a stately, icy blast of whooshy electro into something more human, but only just. It's unsettling.

The same goes for the tiny little squeaks at the beginning that sound like a repetitive cough from Sweep out of Sooty and Sweep, or the slowed-down mooey voices towards the end. Tiny details which don't NEED to be there, but which add flesh to the bones. And as it's a supernatural, eerie sort of a song, it's probably elvish flesh, or undead muscle, on ghoulie-bones.

Not that I'm listening to any of that, you understand. I'm nice and safe here in my little ball, pondering, with my eyes shut.

Naturally.

Five starsDownload: Out now


´óÏó´«Ã½ Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

"Each note sung during the song sounds perfectly, beautifully delivered and meshes so well with the backing music."

" Alice comes off as defanged and (gasp!) sensitive."

"The duo's intentions [are] clear: to hold the listener at arm's length, even as the songs beckon."

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