CarCrashPoolParty... crashing a pool party with your car... it honestly sounds like the most John Hughes name a band can have... without being a direct reference to any of his works, that is. Like, imagine this, a protagonist drives a car (likely borrowed from a friend's Dad without his permission or knowledge) over a three rows of hedges and into the pool at a country club to break up a party hosted by some hoity rich kid who is bogarting the attention of a gorgeous love interest- a display of churlish heroism and reckless disregard for life, limb, and property that some how saves the day and wins back the girl... I can see it vividly, painted before my eyes in bright '80s Hughes-y hues... of course, the band CarCrashPoolParty, actually has nothing to do with any of this (looking through their discography, I'm not even seeing the shadow of a
Sixteen Candles reference... so accusations of affiliation are somewhat unwarranted)- although they're not the type of group I'd except to shy away from brash romantic gestures- in fact their self-titled EP more or less swoons in that direction as a matter of distinction. It's not like allowing yourself to be strung along by your own heart like a sucker tied to a balloon string is an unusual approach for a group playing any sort of emo music, and while they can grace the listener with some downy and wistfully pensive passages, these are measured against a stony sort of angst evident in the brooding guitar work and the intermittent growls of the vocals, both of which speak to an unsated hunger the group is possessed by which has yet to be sated, and which they are discontented by the passage of time towards its resolve. Listening to the careening, teary, gilt, and patter of the confessory "Grieve," and the grippingly ostentatious, spiritual suturing and post-hardcore disaster reporting of "Hovercraft", you get the sense that whatever sustaining fulfillment or epiphany that can be obtained from love and loss, the group is destined to chase it down rather than allow the universe to swivel on its axis while they wait in place, encountering relevant plot point by inertia alone. This boldness is evident not only in the lyrics but in the extensively ambidextrous construction of these tracks as well, combining elements of shoegaze, emo, parlor jazz, and hardcore into a single coherent narrative thrust. There is another side to the band too, one that seems to exist in a distinct and separate plane of the multiverse, where they are a post-psychedelic anomaly that exists somewhere in the fluxing nexus between Glassjaw and Incubus, but in the iteration of the world in which their self-titled EP is set, CarCrashPoolParty are the protagonists of a gripping melodrama that can only end with them either succeeding despite their foolhardiness, or drowning in a valiant vehicular gesture of smitten courage. Whatever the outcome, this EP gets two thumbs WAY UP from me.
