Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

pressure on my chest

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I claim not to make New Year’s Resolutions, but that doesn’t stop me from taking on a slew of new projects every January and getting crushed under their collective weight.

They’re not resolutions, I reason, they’re fresh starts. Lots of projects, blogging, and singing in store for the new year that simply didn’t make sense to start in the bustle of December due to all the holiday downtime. It’s a wishlist of personal creativity, every successive idea mounting like a weight against my heart and mind, lest I let it slip away.

Not coincidentally, I have a similar streak of getting sick every January for the past few years, which leads directly into my debilitating, house-bound February Funk. It doesn’t matter if I get a flu shot, take my vitamins, eat well, get good sleep, and slam down OJ all day. Somehow, some way, a tickle of sickness finds its way into my throat until it becomes tightness in my chest.

I hate it.

First, because I am not that person. I don’t get sick. Or, I didn’t, but now I do with great predictable accuracy, and I hate it.

Even more, I hate that it completely derails my ambition for the year – playing gigs, recording projects, and new songs all go by the wayside while I’m hoarse and scratchy for half a month.

This week I started feeling that familiar, dreaded tickle and fought back hard.  More vitamins, more food, more sleep, and more OJ. I seem to have staved off the actual illness, but I’m still feeling the after-effects – the pressure on my chest.

I hate it, and it made learning vocals to our new Filmstar song hard, it’s going to make my rehearsal of our Garbage tribute set suck, and it transformed the advertising tour of the airport I just walked through into a special kind of marathon.

That’s all fine. It is not getting into the way of my plans for 2011. There will be no February Funk.

Recommended: Corinne Baily Rae – The Sea

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Krisis’s Recommended Releases of 2010:
Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea

The Sea is a record that’s hard not to read into. Singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae was working on the unenviable task of following up her ocean- and genre-crossing self-titled smash debut when her saxophonist husband died from an accidental overdose in 2008.

Corrine Bailey Rae - The Sea. Released 1/26/2010.

The resulting record is visceral and arresting, a snapshot of a shattered heart, still heavy, dragging its owner beneath waves.

The Sea offers an emotional landscape that extends far beyond immediate grief. It rages and bargains, sometimes calm, sometimes churning. Opener “Are You Here” tries to recall the image of a distant lover, every verse ending with a wounded, plaintive call of “Are you here? Are you here, cause my heart recalls, and feels the same.” Her cooed vocals sometimes sound like they won’t resolve into words at all, neither there nor on “I’d Do It All Again,” a slowly-built ballad that wells up into a single extended organ-filled crescendo.

The record has a fantastic quiet-to-loud ratio. Bailey Rae was a punk-rocker in UK before her cooing pop breakout, and that heavier urge is brought to bear on this record. Throbbing synth bass raves up the end of “Love’s On It’s Way,” the refrains of “Diving For Hearts” thrum with energy, and “The Blackest Lily” is her heaviest song yet – not on guitar squall, but with an energetic rhythm-section stomp and unleashed vocal power previously unheard.

The jazz-tinged R&B of Bailey Rae’s debut is still present, but shattered to pieces. “Feels Like the First Time” hints at the effervescent hits like “Trouble Sleeping,” but adds a throbbing, aerobic bass and a high tinkly of piano that echos the hook, but sounds like a shredded version of the Psycho riff.

The simplest, most-cheerful singles here are “Paris Nights / New York Mornings” and “Closer.” “Paris / New York” is light French pop in the model of her debut, but “Closer” a seductive classic that’s more pointed than “Put Your Records On” or “Like a Star.” The crystalline, optimistic chanteuse of the debut album has matured into a woman with more curves.

“Diving for Hearts” is the sound of the waves crashing above her head as she wills herself to drown below her throb of sorrow. “I longed for you like the lovesick moon pulls the tide,” she sighs, “so I peeled off my skin, I just slipped right, and I become alive.” She wallows in the cool numbness of drowning her emotion, wondering “Was it emotion or should I keep on diving down? Under this ocean I long to keep on diving until my heart is found.”

The Sea struggles against a sorrowful undertow that Corinne Bailey Rae might disappear into, never to reemerge. Yet, even in the darkest moments her joy shines through – joy in the memory of her lost lover, and a newly found joy in life. This might not be the follow-up she meant to make, but it’s a powerful testament to the strength of her songwriting and her limber, expressive vocals.

Intuition (an Arcati Crisis adventure)

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I listen to and look at my favorite bands and wonder, “how do they do that?”

I don’t mean the rock star posturing or the songwriting. I’ve figured both of those things out, to a degree. They come with practice (in the mirror).

I mean the intuition. The knowing where a song goes, and how to construct the arrangement of thrumming bass and pounding drums that surround the initial guitar or piano that lie in the center.

I’ve always assumed Gina and I have some special magic in that regard in the the peculiar alchemy of our harmony. And, well, we do. It’s the intuition of best friends. We know each other so well that when one of us teaches a new song to the other it’s like we’re adding an extension of our own hands and voice. There is less and less of  us asking “is this part okay?” and more of   “yes, that!”

That hasn’t been our experience with other musicians. That’s not to say we haven’t played with some brilliant people who have made indelible additions to our songs. It’s just that the additions tend to add too much.

(A notable exception being Dante Bucci, who is invariably a perfectly intuitive collaborator in any setting on any instrument. Also, our friend Chaz arranged the definitive percussion for “Apocalyptic Love Song.”)

As a result, I assumed that there were only two kinds of potential bandmates – people who play well because they understand context (the Rolling Stones know each other, Gina understands me, Dante understands us, Chaz knows our influences) or because their bandleader dictated each note to them.

(That latter seems like an ultimate bit of hubris – why invite another player you respect and not trust them to do anything? But musicians can be freaks of control, and we’ve all seen bands run that way, so it’s certainly a valid angle (which is why we don’t (and may never) have a bass player).)

Now I understand that there is a third category – that an intuitive player can find their way inside of a song instead of adding layers to its exterior. Sure, practice helps. But, the intuition is an intangible. It’s either there or not.

Zina is there. Every one of our songs takes three plays. One to hear how we do it. One to try a few things. One with our new drum arrangement. Fin.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t continue to change and adapt her playing, or that we don’t ask for some tweaks here and there. It’s just that she hears it – us, the song, our gestalt with each other – and then she joins it.

I’m amazed every time. Now I understand my favorite bands a little bit better.

Want to hear the new drummed up Arcati Crisis spectacle, complete with rapturous Gina guitar solos? You can attend Dorian’s Parlor on Saturday 3/12, or just catch us at Fergies Pub on Saturday 4/2.