Crickets – “Elastic”
There’s a new supergroup out in the world. Last year, Le Tigre’s JD Samson formed a new trio called Crickets. The group also features Roddy Bottum, the Faith No More keyboardist and Imperial Teen leader, as well as Michael O’Neill, Samson’s bandmate in MEN, a band that released a couple of electro-pop albums in the early ’10s. Crickets started out playing live shows last year, and today, as Rolling Stone reports, they’ve announced plans to release their self-titled debut album next month.
Crickets recorded their debut album in Brooklyn with producer Miles Robinson. Ben Greenberg — frontman of the Men, the Brooklyn band who sometimes got mixed up with MEN — mixed it. Along with the album announcement, Crickets have shared “Elastic,” a hard-thwacking and energetic synth-punk song about the danger of attempting to assimilate the power of toxic masculinity. It’s got a real physical pulse to it, and if you like Le Tigre, there’s a very good chance you’ll be into it. Check it out below.
Recently, Crickets also dropped the similarly sticky single “Drilled Two Holes.” Check that one out below.
Talking to Rolling Stone, Roddy Bottum says:
The simplicity and the bare bones with which we afforded ourselves in the process of writing and recording were key to the overall project. We went out of our way to limit ourselves to the bare necessities of tools and voices, and then stripped it down even further to achieve a barren and isolated effect. The music is addressing a need in the three of us to simplify and creatively explore the option of making music without the excess of presence of a masculine toxicity in expression and in the studio.
Crickets is out 7/17 on Muddgutts.