CRUUSH

Beyond the hygienically editorialized coffeehouse playlisting at Spotify lurks a disenfranchised underbelly to whom it has reluctantly passed the aux chord. Stare into the pensive gloom long enough and a world of user-made playlisting is revealed. Doomscroll curation for generation genocide. Between the brilliantly titled ‘did you forget to take your meds?’ and ‘long denim skirt, a Redbull and an ugly bf’ is where you’ll meet Manchester shoegaze heavyweights, Cruush. “I guess you can say our music has the sweet elements of having a crush on someone but the screeching of an industrial car crusher” states vocalist & frontperson Amber Warren. And she’s bob on. Cruush do have a melodic front. One that sounds like a manufacturing error of prettiness. Corrosive. Half-melted. Spewing a destabilising grunginess. So intense it creates a kind of paralysis. But the core IP is formed when Amber’s darkwave nursery rhymes of dead-eyed dreamstate meet the white-knuckle tension of Arthur Boyd’s elliptical guitar. Tones muscular enough to administer compound fractures rage a cold war on the ears. Textures move in and out of phase, pluming for miles, drone-laced and magnificent. The result is shoegaze by digital natives. A generation for whom pluralism is commonplace. Cruush are therefore half memory and half anticipation; pulling at the brain-bypass grandeur of the genre they love, while lacing the punch with a contemporary aesthetic.