I’m on an embarrassing run of broken jewel
cases. This next album not only has
broken tines for holding the CD in, but the cover hinge is also broken. Definitely in need of replacement, and a
black mark for someone like me who prides himself on taking care of his music
collection. Not in this case, it would seem.
Disc 440 is… Aurora
Artist: Crash
Vegas
Year of Release: 1995
What’s up with the Cover? The giant head cover – only with two heads! One of the heads is obscured by hands, but
fortunately it isn’t singer Michelle McAdorey, who is quite a fetching lass, in
that pixie-haired mid-nineties kind of way.
How I Came To Know It: I think I heard these
guys singing “Pocahontas” in a video
and really liked it. At the time I had
no idea it was a Neil Young remake. That’s
no crime, though; the more I learn about music the more I realize how little I
know. This is a good thing, because it
means there are many discoveries still out there waiting.
How It Stacks Up: Crash Vegas released three albums in the early
nineties, but I only have this one, so it doesn’t really stack up.
Rating: 3 stars
There
was plenty of good Canadian university music in the early nineties, or maybe it’s
just that I was in university, so I remember it favourably. Whatever the case, somewhere along the way I
got onto the atmospheric folk/rock mix of Crash Vegas long enough to buy this
album – their last before the band would go its separate ways.
Atmospheric
is the first word that comes to mind with these guys. The production reminded me strongly of Daniel
Lanois, although not as good. Imagine,
then, my self-satisfaction when I found that Lanois’ sister, Jocelyne played
bass on the record. I can only assume
Daniel and Jocelyne were raised in Atlantis, because whatever they touch gets
this waves n’ water vibe.
Singer
Michelle McAdorey isn’t just a distinctly pretty face; she’s got a distinctly
pretty voice to match. Her voice makes
me think of those awkwardly shy but attractive pretty indie girls that you fall
in love with late at a house party. Or
maybe a changeling pretending to be that girl to lure you out into the depths
of the overgrown garden out back and steal you off to faerie land. Both visions are equally pleasant. Whatever it is, her breathy delivery doesn’t
overpower you, but she still manages to stay above the band’s layers of
production without ever sounding like she’s straining to do it.
The rest
of the musicians didn’t stand out for me, but that is more a decision in the
arrangements, which don’t call for a lot of noodling or displays of
virtuosity. Crash Vegas is a band that
is much more in the modern folk-indie style, where a series of simple parts are
played together to make an interesting layer of sound, but no one instrument
dominates.
The
downside to this is that the songs can tend to blend together, and the record
loses some dynamics. It’s also a bit
overlong at sixty minutes, reminding me of when CDs started fully replacing
LPs, and artists stopped being so vicious about leaving lesser tracks on the
cutting room floor.
Musically
these songs are introspective, get-in-touch-with-your-feelings numbers. They are best suited for head phones,
preferably with a small helping of self-loathing. I don’t always know what they’re singing
about - some of the stuff is a bit too creative writing workshop for my tastes –
but they capture tone and mood well, and that’s the first thing music’s got to
do to be successful.
A case
in point is “Weekend.” I don’t know what this song is about, but
when McAdorey sings “It’s my weekend/I
feel good” it reminds me of how jealously we guard our weekends when we’ve
got little else. It’s a fragile yet
defiant expression that no matter how broke or lonely you might be, the weekend
is yours. I think it’s about some other
stuff as well but again, the clouds of poetry workshop obscurity were too much
for my ears to penetrate.
Not so
obscure is “Clinic” a brilliant and emotionally
terrifying description of a trip to an abortion clinic. I’m not qualified to comment on what that
must feel like, but I can better appreciate it because of this song’s stark and
thoughtful lyrics. These are paired with
a single reverberating electric guitar that sounds desperately like it wants to
be acoustic. I love when electric
guitars do that.
“Aurora” isn’t all depressing though, and
the few up-tempo songs are a welcome break.
“On and On (Lodestar),” “Old Enough” and “Scarborough” all kick it up a notch, and all three are favourites
of mine on the record. I do have to
point out that “Scarborough” ends
with a minute of recorded silence, and then another minute of electric guitars
making whale songs. It is a sad decision
on an otherwise rockin’ track.
And of
course, there’s “Pocahontas,” the
remake of the Neil Young classic. Crash
Vegas so perfectly own this song that I was shocked pink to find it wasn’t
actually their song. I love Neil’s
version as well, but Crash Vegas’ is so different I appreciate it just as
much. They strip the hippy sound right
out of it and fill it with university pub-performance (the good kind, not the ‘please
put the canned music back on’ kind).
This
album drags a little in places, but it is mostly solid, with not a few stand
outs. With only three albums – and the
last of those over fifteen years ago – Crash Vegas hasn’t survived in the
public consciousness the way they deserve.
This record does sound very much of its time, but it stands up well in the
present as well, and I was glad to get reacquainted with it for the umpteenth
time.
Best tracks: On and On (Lodestar), Weekend, Old Enough, Clinic,
Pocahontas, Scarborough
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