Crazy Eyes’s Suburban Disappearance is a glam rock fever dream
Well, let’s try again. Once more around the carousel, only this time a little slower so the buildings come into focus. A little more pep in the step, a little more sponge in the cake, a little more fizz in the plastic soda bottle. Maybe that’ll get the brain buzzards to pay attention.
I think Crazy Eyes are a great band in that they’ve got an ear for catchy melodies, a knack for avoiding cliche, and a sense of restraint to only put out the best stuff they have, which is why Suburban Disappearance is their second LP in 12 years. Maybe that’s an unwise tactic if you’re trying to keep people’s attention, but if your ultimate goal is a rock-solid body of work, they’ve nailed it.
On their new record, G Kellen Grace, the piano plinker behind the project, sands down the close-mic’ed abrasiveness of his earlier work in favor of whirl and whimsy, glam and glitter. But the songwriting remains potent, from the opening strut of “Beatitude” to the sunlit vocal harmonies unleashed on “Day Moon King,” and there’s enough variety to keep you hooked through even a cursory listen. Then, as you press repeat, you’ll hear the details pop out - the shifting downbeat on “Green Goerge Pleaidian,” for instance, or the call-and-response of Casey Rosebridge’s “big gold obelisk bass guitar” with Grace’s lysergic narrative on “Beatitude.”
Grace’s voice comes off a little like if you took Stewart Lupton’s voice and siphoned most of the Jim Morrison out of it. It’s all confidence and attitude, able to lay down a ridiculous opening line like “A little brokenhearted boy with a head full of cookies,” as he does on “Big Bird,” and stick the landing. More so than the words, it’s the cadence of their recitation that impresses - the tumbling “rhy-thm-ic-ally” on “Beatitude,” the way he suggestively stretches out the opening note on “McChillha,” and his utterance of the title of “Green George Pleiadian” like if Ezra Koenig were fucked up on shrooms.
The band is tight throughout, yet at the center of the swirl, as always, is the piano: a 400-pound instrument the band dutifully hauls on stage (as its own mini stage) every performance. It’s their not-so-secret weapon across the album, both in its handful of theatrical set pieces and as an agent of chaos, especially on the climatic “Passed Out.”
Isn’t there’s something fruity going on in the subtext? Maybe it’s all the male pronouns and the drug metaphors and titles like “Swingset Buttermilk Fuck Net,” a song which passes by drolly before abruptly dropping out like someone walked in on something. I’m pretty sure it’s just me. Part of the gay experience is catching the sly entrendre, sifting words and images for crumbs of context.
I’m also pretty sure I’d be wrong no matter what, as Grace assertively trashes any and all interpretations of the dream his band has conjured. “You must be mistaken,” he yelps on “Passed Out,” hawking up a mouthful of gravel as he lies in the iddle of the road, awake in a dream.