I have one other Abe Vigoda album (2008’s Skeletons) and it sounds nothing like this one. Reference pages such as Wikipedia will have to find a whole new term to describe this band’s shifting sound, because ‘tropical punk rock’ really isn’t such a good fit now. On their new album Crush, the Californian four-piece have opted to drop themselves into a pool of coldwave.
It’s an eye-raising genre switch, but there are elements to this album that make it distinctively Abe Vigoda: most notably the delirious joyride pace of it all. However, things do manage to get a little less frenetic as the album stomps its way into its second half, with the moody dreampop of Repeating Angel and the slightly anticlimactic closer, We Have To Mask.
The music and lyrics explore the dual meaning of ‘crush’, with oppressive love (read: stalking) songs such as Dream Of My Love (Chasing After You) and the title track among the various shining highlights. While drums and guitars are still an important part of the band’s energetic instrumentation, the synths have been shoved right to the forefront. There’s also a bigger focus on the vocals, which were previously swallowed up as part of the whole shambolic clatter. Here, they stand out due to being more affected – to match the gothic drama of the music, vocalist Michael Vidal aims for somewhere between Richard Butler from The Psychedelic Furs and Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen. The results are fittingly miserable and self-pitying.
Perhaps the best way to describe the latest mood swing for Abe Vigoda is that there’s been a dramatic change of temperature; the austere chill of Crush is a far cry from the steamy, tropical storm of Skeletons. The end results are never lukewarm, so long may their genre-hopping continue.
