I was really excited for this new Crystal Castles record, I really was. I even knew that Alice Glass had been replaced, and when “Char” (the only single I really paid any attention to) came along, I shrugged off its shiny, almost Chvrches-like glamour. And while the rest of the record does vary (take the mid-2000s rave-ready “Enth,” for example), none of it quite catches my attention like previous releases did. The industrial noise background is still there, but the simple catchiness of tracks like “Baptism,” which turned Alice’s unintelligible screaming into one of the most danceable vocal additions to a track I’d heard in a while, are nowhere to be seen.
Maybe the tracks on Amnesty (I) are just too subdued for me. But it might also be that when Alice Glass walked away from the duo, she took the Crystal out of Crystal Castles. Now we’re just left with Castles.
Where’s the fun in that? Castles are boring, man.
