A beauty in the making, Karen O’s Crush Songs plays like a disappearing phantom. Let me clarify: Crush Songs sounds like a lost collection of tracks from an unknown great.
Apparently the album was produced quite some time ago, in 2007, when the singer behind the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs was 27. She recorded the material on her own, which makes a lot of sense: The album is a lonely and intimate chronicle of love. It comes from a personal and deeply pensive place.
In its totality, Crush Songs sadly only lasts about 20-25 minutes. Short and sweet. Maybe a little bit creepy at times, definitely with Karen’s small, occasionally scratchy voice and the fuzzy quality of the recordings.
“Ooo” casts teeny background hums over melancholy lyrics (“Don’t tell me that they’re all the same”) before ending too quickly at a minute thirty. And then comes “Rapt,” the pre-released single: “Love is soft, love’s a fucking bitch.” So clearly (and understandably) there are some mixed feelings here. The tone drifts between cynicism and dreamy longing.
Crush Songs is just a whisper of something greater. Its bare-bones approach allows the smallest nuances to glow. In “Other Side,” the smoky vocals are soon accompanied by the light, quiet tone of a piano and then the low beat of shakers. The song is slightly more than one minute long: cutting itself off before the sound can become anything more than a novel, exciting thing. The same happens with “Visits,” which sounds like spoken word tacked to a mild beat and a few upbeat acoustic notes. As the tone starts to unveil itself, the melody stops.
That is perhaps the trick behind these little clips of music: They give us something new and beautiful and lovely and take it away before we know what we’re even listening to. Each new song keeps us surprised and on our toes. Is this the kind of love we’re supposed to know?
In Karen O’s own eloquent words: “They are the soundtrack to what was an ever continuing LOVE CRUSADE. I hope they keep you company on yours.”
Crush Songs