crocodiles

the crocodiles are a band that i had only heard of recently when i got the chance to see them. summer of hate, their debut, came out in 2009; sleep forever came out in 2010.

a friend casually mentioned to me that i should check them out, because i like the jesus and mary chain. i went on ye olde youtube and started listening and was instantly won over. swirly guitars and echo-y vocals and dreamy noisy pop songs? yes please. i want all of it.

i ordered the first album for myself at the record store and then the second one after i played the shit out of the first one. summer of hate is really, really good and has this one song called "i wanna kill" which was the original song i heard that won me over. listen to it; it gives you a pretty good idea of what these guys are about and might even give you goosebumps. sleep forever is even better. i want "hearts of love" played at my funeral. 

so after completely falling in love with this band, i found out they would be touring and my boss and our friend both wanted to go, too, so we had a fun little road trip to hoboken. hooray! royal baths were the opener. i ended up really liking them as well; they were a nice fit on a bill with crocodiles and the dum dum girls. definitely worth checking out. 

we got right up front for the crocodiles set. and i was almost quite literally blown away. it was loud. but in that nice, dreamy, fuzzy way. sort of like you're floating in a cloud of noise. that might not sound as pleasant as it actually is. it's not like going to see a rock band and being blasted away by guitar solos and loud drumming. it's like a constant droning fuzz that envelopes you, but you don't want to get out of its grip. or like drowning, if drowning didn't kill you. please tell me this is making some kind of sense. that's the best way i can come up with to describe their live show. i think being as tired as i was from the lack of sleep the past few nights actually enhanced the fuzzy feeling. i look back on that show very fondly indeed.

after their set we went out to the other room to get something to eat, and my friend and i got to talking while my boss wanted to go in and see the dum dum girls. we talked so much we missed almost their entire set, but it was nice talking with her so i didn't care. we did go in and catch the last song or two, and it was really cool. 

then i went home and slept for an entire day. not really. but it was a nice thought.

since that show, they put out a third album, endless flowers, which is just as wonderful and magical as the other two, but sleep forever still gets my favorite vote. just my opinion. but you can't go wrong with any of them as far as i'm concerned.