The 63 Crayons

Spoils For Survivors

Pixel Studios

originally published February 21, 2007

"9/11 changed everything." You can't say it now with a straight face (because people went too far with it, took it to mean "changed everything totally" rather than "changed everything a little bit"), and the administration's constant invocation of that particular timestamp has become a running gag that isn't funny. But just because we've misconstrued the event doesn't make it less meaningful. 9/11 drove the country a little crazy, which you can see both in our politics and our conversations. The lead-up to the midterms felt like emerging from a bad dream for a reason: we were all seeing the same things again, agreeing at least on what was reality and what wasn't. (A judgment call that neither side had a particular monopoly on previously.) This is why there hasn't really been a work of art truly about 9/11 yet. Artists realized, consciously or not, that we were still too close to the event to make sense of it, which is another way of saying that we were still all a little crazy.

But hey, Athens' The 63 Crayons decided to give it a try anyway on Spoils For Survivors, figuring if they actually make an album about what it's like to be crazy in these crazy times it'll work out okay. So they let their fruitcake fly, with songs called "Forget About The War, Let's Go Shopping!" and "Let Fission Ring" (despite the fact that this is neither a Fall Out Boy nor a !!! album), but also "Crisis Nerviosa" and "Save Us." As those titles reflect, the album feels like drifting in and out of moments of clarity.

This haziness comes, in part, from the music, with almost all the vocals hiding behind reverb and delay, and the bass coming from keyboards, thus lacking the attack of a bass guitar. But the production doesn't match the actual songs at times, nor does it mesh with the definitions that comprise the text of the booklet (new wave, progressive rock, psychedelic, punk rock). The reasoning isn't clear until we reach the second half of the album and songs that more fully embody the sound at work here: dub. On steadier songs like "Science," the members of 63 Crayons sound actually unhinged, bass pushing steadily forward, organ pulling back, drums taking their time, vocals twisting. Musically, it's wonderful, patient and interesting, placing its sounds with precise reasoning and fully engaging the listener.

When this sound is applied to speedier songs, though, the haze becomes an undifferentiated blur, and it ends up sounding like nothing, just a band playing on the other side of a wall. These songs may be standard retroisms, or they may be good, but it's almost impossible to tell, and songs of this kind make up the bulk of the Spoils For Survivors. That haze ends up acting like the craziness that's engulfed us, making some things better (after 9/11, for instance, New Yorkers broke out of their isolation and engaged with each other as human beings), but blocking us from fully coming to grips with everything else.

Michael Barthel

The 63 Crayons are playing a CD release show at the Caledonia Lounge on Wednesday, Feb. 28.