After years of hard graft on the toilet circuit, angular London punks Crows have finally dropped their debut album, and it instantly throws the seasoned support act (Crows have appeared on bills beneath the likes of Wolf Alice, Slaves and METZ) into the spotlight, sucked into the magnetic orbit of the unstoppable IDLES.
Silver Tongues appears on Balley Records, co-owned by IDLES singer Joe Talbot and manager Mark Bent, but is much more than just a black feather in Talbot’s cap – even though it was his band’s performance at Latitude (opposite the burrito van in which Crows frontman James Cox was working) which coaxed the album out of the darkness (literally – it was recorded with the lights off) and into the strobes.
That show inspired Cox to send Talbot a message, strictly as a fan, sparking a conversation which led on to a discussion about a fully-recorded but as-yet unreleased album; that album is now sitting pretty on Balley Records and Crows are embarking on a UK tour with IDLES.
But Silver Tongues is much more than just a nice story, it is a colossus of a record in its own right. Bookended by singles ‘Chain of Being’ – a heady brew of Joy Division and the Cure boiled down to a melodic punk concentrate – and the raucous ‘Wednesday’s Child’, the album twists and contorts itself through the menacing ‘Crawling’ and ‘Hang Me High’ via the vitriolic title track and on to the disarmingly gentle wall-of-noise ‘Dysphoria’.
The band are best known on the live circuit for fist-shattering punk dropkicks like ‘Demeanour’ but Silver Tongues reveals layers of complexity beneath that beer-stained exterior. Crows have paid their dues and then some, and are now all set to take flight – prepare for a murder.
Words - Joe Ponting