Has Crocodiles singer Brandon Welchez always harbored homicidal ambitions? “Nothing’s wrong, nothing’s right,” laments the vocalist and occasional guitarist in a woozy number from Summer of Hate, his band’s latest release. He offers some signs of his deteriorating state but his concerns are quickly lost among the track’s whirs and pulses. “All the kids sing along with me,” he implores with newfound empowerment and then the chorus lets the truth loose: “I/ I want to kill tonight/ I want to kill to-na-ha-ha-ah-ight.”
When unraveling this revelation,Welchez doesn’t turn grisly or sinister. Instead, his voice ebbs with the comforting croon of a 15-year-old proudly paying tribute to his first romance. Depraved overtones aside, the only marked difference between a high schooler’s homage and Welchez’s coy anthem in “I Wanna Kill” is that the latter comes backed by smooth waves of electro that dissipate into groovy reverb.The ballad is a come-on of a death threat, a torch song for the untapped tendencies of the American Psycho set. Listen intently and you can hear Patrick Bateman soulfully swaying a flame from a pricy Zippo before picking his axe back up.
Hack away into the material and it grows likely that Welchez doesn’t really want to take up the murder business; instead, the man has grown complacent with his old aural pursuits and longs to do something unexpected.
Welchez and co-Crocodile Charles Rowland (lead guitar/keyboards) have been experiencing such pangs for a few years now. Beginning in 2001, the pair manned positions in jazz-punk outfit The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, vigorously treading the group’s scratchy terrain until it was fallow.Then, in 2006,The Plot blew up—likely for the better.
Recalling the quartet’s maddening sonic bile, Welchez observes, “I couldn’t get my melodic rocks off. I like melody a lot, and in that band there was a lot of restriction on that. It was more about experimenting with abrasive sounds.”There are about immediate positives about touring with Crocodiles instead of The Plot: “I don’t have to lose my voice or hurt my throat,” he raves.
The convenience of being able to speak after a show isn’t the only reason Crocodiles formed.The duo assumed their new guise to satisfy nagging and long-standing artistic compulsions. “When we were both 17, we were writing songs in my bedroom that sounded like T. Rex,” recalls Rowland. He mentions that the aesthetics of the act originated in experiments with Suicide and Primal Scream lyrics (though Welchez has no recollection of doing this) before the group dove into writing material of their own.
Influenced by 1960s garage and striking across-the-Atlantic electronica like Kraftwerk, Crocodiles certainly is a foray in unfamiliar territory for the two. “We just didn’t have the balls or the maturity to actually go and make music that was pretty,” states Rowland flatly of past efforts. “There’s a point when every artist matures and you want to make music that stands the test of time. I don’t think The Plot really will [stand the test] as much as the music we’re making now.We’ve always been into that stuff. It was just like, let’s try and write music that we enjoy listening to.”
Said music comes out as scruffy D.I.Y. electro bathed in an off-kilter haze that could easily be attributed to some forgotten ’80s garage group that made one record before disappearing.With a sound decorated with shimmering tambourines, distantly echoing vocals and shaky feedback, it’s easy to imagine every Crocodiles release (two 7- inch records and the recent full-length) fitting in on a LP that spends a lifetime accumulating dust in a Goodwill until some music nerd unearths the dated treasure. Crocodiles records its material with such intentionally tinny production that separating the smart harmonies from the fuzz is particularly gratifying for the listener.
While the duo has plans to eventually expand its ranks (for those first performances, “it was pretty awkward only having a drum machine,” notes Rowland), they have lots of time to kill. “This thing could go on as long as we’d like it to,” says Rowland, confirming that Crocs are here to annihilate all ennui.
> Crocodiles
May 23, The Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; 8:30, $15.
