Los Angeles duo crushed announce their signing to Ghostly International and the first vinyl pressing of their 2023 debut EP, extra life. A love letter to ‘90s radio, the first collaboration from musicians Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan finds them tuning a shared taste for maximalist dream pop. Open-hearted hooks and melodic riffs move through a haze of breakbeats, spliced sound design, and distortion. Faithful yet fluid in its channeling of golden age alt-rock, Britpop, trip-hop, and electronica, there’s a refreshing freedom to the sound, which quickly resonated with fans and critics upon initial release. Pitchfork called it “effortless, widescreen dream pop that’s serene without being sentimental,” and NPR cited its “deep sense of place and time.” The music also struck Ghostly, and the first measure for crushed and their new label home is to give extra life a wider physical release paired with remix- es from band favorites Real Lies and DJ Python.

The story of crushed is written across midnight transmissions. In the early 2010s, Morell, who fronts the band Temple of Angels (Run For Cover Records), hosted a graveyard shift college radio show and used to play music from Durkan’s former band Weekend (Slumberland Records). In 2020, Durkan, having focused on pro- duction work (Tamaryn, Young Prisms) following Weekend’s run as a formidable shoegaze act, hosted a late-night program on a community radio station in San Francisco. Driving one day, he heard Temple of Angels by chance and was imme- diately drawn to Morell’s voice. He added a song that night to his on-air tracklist. Morell saw it and reached out to thank him and point to that connection made a decade earlier.

The exchange sparked a long-distance project. First, they filled an audible moodboard with ‘90s classics from the likes of Natalie Imbruglia, Sneaker Pimps, and The Sundays. Songs that transported them back to places of comfort and discovery; Morell’s memories of a metallic, lavender boombox that dispatched past sounds from a world beyond her Houston suburbia, and Durkan, in his mom’s car on the way to band practice. These touchpoints provided a palette for crushed to experiment without expectations, purely for the fun of it.

A creative intimacy emerged; stepping outside the reverb walls of her full band, Morell embraced more clarity and a range of emotions in her vocals, while Durkan looked inward as a producer, collaging fragments from their everyday lives: voice memos, piano recordings, even the panting of Morell’s late dog on “milksugar.” The wistful ballad embodies extra life’s feeling as a whole. “I am home again,” sings Morell; her refrain cycles above a drum machine beat as Durkan colorstheir universe with star-lit strums, synth swells, and the crackle of fireworks in the distance. Elsewhere, the duo’s uptempo mode is equally effective, like the su- per-charged duet “coil” or the propulsive opener “waterlily,” which sets a cinematic tone for the set.

Bold, bright, and replayable, extra life presents crushed as a project of immense promise, two artists unlocking something special within themselves, a space to hold both melancholy and bliss. Durkan adds, “To me, [extra life] is true and pure - in a way I haven’t felt about music in a really really long time.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Waterlily
2. Coil
3. Milksugar
4. Bedside
5. Respawn
6. Lorica

CRUSHED! is the culmination of a year’s worth of work, and builds on Cole’s streak of instantly catchy and meticulously crafted pop songs that are destined to be scream-along anthems. Incorporating threads of pop, emo and indie, CRUSHED! is a mark of Cole’s continued growth as a songwriter and producer, and is a brilliant and bold offering from an artist who continues to go from strength to strength as one of the most exciting young popstars in the UK. “I think of CRUSHED like it’s my diary. I took relationships and experiences I’ve had in the past and literally felt crushed every time I’d think about each scenario. Each song helped me get through unresolved trauma over sour relationships. As I wrote these songs in early 2022, each step of making these songs come to life has helped me overcome each unwanted memory in a different way. We recorded them in September, and having to revisit them so confidently knowing they would be out for the world to see was a whole other obstacle needing facing. But I know that I don't ever want to put music out unless it feels like you’re reading my diary. It’s where I am most authentic and vulnerable, and I wouldn't want you to see me any other way”. 

TRACK LISTING

1. HEARTBREAKERS
2. SAD GUY GEMINI
3. IS IT COOL 2 B FRIENDS?
4. YOUAREYOUAREYOUARE
5. HOMEWRECKER

Life is horribly dark right now. And yet, it is not unfunny.

That’s the sentiment that animates Water From Your Eyes on their new album, and first for Matador, ‘Everyone’s Crushed’. On the follow-up to the Brooklyn duo’s 2021 breakthrough, ‘Structure’, Rachel Brown (they/them) and Nate Amos (he/him) find silliness and fatalism dancing in a frantic lockstep, using heart palpitating rhythms and absurdist, deadpan lyrics to convey stories of personal and societal unease. Described by Brown as Water From Your Eyes’ most collaborative record ever, it’s a swollen contusion of an album: experimental pop music that’s pretty and violent, raw and indelible.

‘Everyone’s Crushed’ is shot through with unresolved tension, its nine tracks skittishly refusing to seek out resolute endings or stick to traditional structures. Many songs were written using serialism and microtonalism, and at times evoke the futurist-pop moves of Japanese composer Haruomi Hosono and the brutalism of Glenn Branca. “Barley” is a dance-rock track sequenced in alien tonality, with Brown speaking garbled transmissions (“One two three/Counter/You’re a cool thing count mountains”) over a bed of hallucinatory guitars. “14” leans into contemporary classical, with curtains of overlapping de-tuned strings underscoring lyrics that Nate describes as something out of a “gross-out horror movie”: “I’m ready to throw you up.”

Water From Your Eyes still possess an off kilter, shitposty quality. ‘Everyone’s Crushed’ manages to reference classic rock twice – first, on “Barley,” when Brown accidentally invokes Sting with the lyric “walk in fields of gold,” and again on “True Life”, when they sing: “Neil let me sing your song/It’s been this way for so long/Give me another chance.” Those weren’t the song’s original lyrics – Brown and Amos initially wanted to interpolate the bridge to “Cinnamon Girl” – but this is a typically meta compromise for the pair, a way to turn “True Life” into a song about writing the song “True Life”.

‘Everyone’s Crushed’ maps the liminal space between humor and darkness, between cracking up and freaking out. In the album’s closing moments Brown speaks in direct terms, “Clap those hands/Buy my product/There are no happy endings/I’m spending/I’m spending.” It’s playful and totally serious, punky bordering on anarchic, and a resolution to the record’s opening sentiment - “I just wanted to pray for the rain/Wishful thinking for sunny days.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Ashley says: A wonderfully bold, jagged juxtaposition of gritty electronics and swooning guitar riffs, all topped with perfectly measured vocals and soaring harmonies. It's steeped in post-punk and electronic history, but lightened with a melodic sensibility that could only have bloomed from the past 20 years of pop history.

TRACK LISTING

1. Structure
2. Barley
3. Out There
4. Open
5. Everyone’s Crushed
6. True Life
7. Remember Not My Name
8. 14
9. Buy My Product