Album review: The Crocodiles – Summer of Hate

Fabulous news, oh frabjous joy! Kaloo, kalay! It turns out that, after the demise of Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom didn’t knock out a half-decent Spectrum album then sink beneath the “thrilling” and not-at-all-pointless waves of E.A.R., never to be trusted again. No, he changed his name to either Charles Rowell or Brandon Welchez, pissed off to San Diego (taking his “Nang-a-nang-a-nang” Machine with him, naturally), met the one named above who wasn’t him and decided to try writing songs in major keys under the moniker of The Crocodiles. The result? Summer of Hate, obviously, idiot; keep up for pity’s sake or we’ll be here all day.

So yeah, yeah, “I Wanna Kill” is virtually a direct lift of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On” and, OK, “Sleeping With the Lord” is pretty much Jason Pierce’s greatest hits squeezed into a single song but, fuck it, I love Jason Pierce and “Head On” is my favourite J&MC song, so frankly I’m in ex-drug-bunny heaven. [Ex? - Ed.] If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

The Crocodiles clearly heard that vocal distortion much loved by the above mentioned (and others such as New FADS, the Bunnymen et al) and decided they’d slather it across every song on Summer of Hate. It’s a neat way of tying it all together as, genre-wise, it veers madly from droney blessed out wonderfulness (“Summer of Hate” itself, “Screaming Chrome”, “Young Drugs”) to what would be balls-out man-rock in other hands but which – fed through their filters, the nang-a-nang machine and their obvious love of horizontal delay – is more Velvet Underground than Velvet Revolver.

At little more than 30 minutes long, Summer of Hate leaves me wanting more – which is pretty bloody rare when you’ve the attention span of an ADHD-addled gnat like what I- ooh look: a bee!

The Crocodiles are touring Europe this summer; I’ll see you at the back, swaying slightly and grinning beatifically, proving that fat-handed twat Richard Ashcroft utterly wrong.