Soaring and stumbling like a drunken Jeff Buckley, uncompromising but ‘friendly’ New Yorker Hamilton Leithhauser bleeds into the microphone and an emphatically new sound is born. Recorded at Marcata Recording studio in Manhattan, with a sound that is held together with little more than plaster tape and glue, ‘Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone’ is something of a revelation. Press darlings Hot Hot Heat have listed them amongst their own favourite listens of the moment, and Crud is more than prepared to go as far to say that it will be one of the most significant releases of the year. This might not become apparent in 2003, but by 2004 I insist that any decent rock legend in the making will be quoting it amongst his or her greatest inspirations. It will never be massively popular. It may never be widely remembered – but like a burgeoning Daniel Johnson, it will probably grace the chest of a thousand cool, dead icons. Mark my words: this is good.
With influences everywhere from Joy Division (title track, ‘Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone’, the whining guitar break in ‘Wake Up’ to name just two) to The Cure it’s discernibly English in spirit, not least because of the almost gossamer punk attitude to production: muffled, distorted pianos, distressed guitars, wiry peripheral noises, ad hoc tape manipulation, and a mad as shit Wayne Coyne approach to miking the drums up in someone’s tool shed. Those of us old enough to remember the eighties might recall the similarly lo-key Blue Nile and the marvellously eclectic output of 4AD – but that said there’s barely any one single recognisable reference point.
Sparse, delicate and disturbingly beautiful throughout, the album combines elements of snowbound soup kitchen Christmases, turn of the century tenements, your grandmother’s trinket boxes, Tom Waits up in your attic and a haunted hall of mirrors. It’s weird; it’s unnerving but hand on heart it’s quietly stunning.
Stick ‘The Blizzard of ‘96’ on repeat on your CD player, sit back and for one moment in your life at least, go against the grain. This is the gospel according to Matthew, Peter, Paul, Hamilton and Walter.