The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)
18. Crocodiles, Summer Of Hate
I still remember the first time I heard the Crocodiles song “(Soft Skull) In My Room”; I thought for sure they were going to swing right into the riff from The Fall’s “Cruiser’s Creek”, and I thought to myself, “Self, this sounds like someone marrying Jesus & Mary Chain to The Fall and that sure is a brilliant idea I wish you’d thought of”. Further confessions: this is a record with a handful of standout tracks (“I Wanna Kill” re-writes the JAMC chestnut “Happy When It Rains” delightfully subversively; “Sleeping With The Lord” could’ve been a vintage Spacemen 3 chilldown hymn; the title track is also a glorious salute to Kember and Pierce that no fan of Spiritualized should miss) with what sounds like a lot of filler thrown in. Thing is, when you have songs in your arsenal like these–songs that give you swagger and spit and verve–sometimes that’s enough. This is one of those “bands to watch”, because they very well could have a start-to-finish era-defining album in their future.
The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T
Popnarcotic 