Sleep Forever
Crocodiles
Fat Possum Records.
Original SCQ Review
Somehow I didn’t see it at first, that nebulous grave luring children toward the brink. “You created me. Get in,” its darkness beckons, promising secrets one can never understand in the comforts of their parents’ living-room. Kids don’t typically hang out in cemeteries unless they’ve experienced death first-hand, but these kids stand undeterred as if they’ve already lost a precious piece of their youth. Nothing about these children, or the hole they’re digging, suggests that they’re the type to believe that when people die, they’re just sleeping forever.
That naïve mentality lurks around the comatose ambience Crocodiles harness on this sophomore, fleshing out their garage impulsiveness with a pristine echo that shapes these riffs in new, more resonant ways. And it’s almost as easy to miss initially, its cosmic bottomless end no clearer than Sleep Forever’s graveyard plot. The riffs are stellar, Crocodiles’ choruses rouse all kinds of ecstatic, testosterone-based feelings, but it’s the electronic cracks between these rock-slabs that offer its pomp (‘Billy Speed’) and restraint (‘All My Hate and My Hexes Are For You’).
There’s a lot of wonder hidden inside Sleep Forever, and it works best when compounded with Crocodiles’ swaggering defiance against all of those zines that scheduled their destruction. Suitably, Sleep Forever boasts experience beyond Crocodiles’ age.
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