There’s probably no more apt a title for an LP than Long Play. Simple, self-explanatory, cuts to the chase. Very quickly realizing that’s the first time I’ve ever used “cut to the chase” in any context, let alone writing. I forgot to mention the band’s name. It’s Los Cripis (translates to “The Cripis”. But “Cripis” sounds like “Creepies,” so let’s say that’s what it translates to: “The Creepies”). They’re from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and they have a new long player called Los Cripis Long Play. It’s almost eponymous, but not quite (I also realized that if you’re reading this you saw the band’s name in the title of the post—I apologize for the redundancy, dear reader).
The album costs £1,000 GBP on Unwork Records’ Bandcamp, which either means the album hasn’t been released yet or Los Cripis is just a greedy motley crew of weirdo (self-described) “anarcho-pop” curmudgeons. I’m leaning towards the former. Prices aside, the music sounds like The Shaggs took a liking to punk music. But they can actually play their instruments, so instead of holding them for the first time when they went into the studio, it sounds like they’d all been playing along with TV theme songs on the couch for maybe a year now.
“I’m Going to Buy Food”—the album’s second track—is about food, and the consumption of food, and the monetary consumption of the consumption of food (which is by nature doubly consumable). Between twangy and untuned guitars and 60s-slop drums on the track, Josi’s voice sounds like an escape from the swirl of unsettling pseudo-psych punk.
The rest of the album is on the same metaphysical aural street, with such choice cuts as the anti-ballad “Vietnamess” and the surf-bop of “All My Friends Are Dead”. Despite the dark undertones in the song titles and wacky lyrics, the tracks are largely energetic and up-tempo. It’s unsettling, to say the very least; fun as hell, to say the very most. With Los Cripis Long Play, the Los Cripis folk are out to weird you out. They weird me out too. They’re the musical mush in my fucked-up audio brain centers, and it makes me feel weird but I like it (in the least creepy way possible, I promise).
Stream the whole album below, and watch the video for “All My Friends Are Dead” beneath that.
Los Cripis Long Play is due July 18 via U.K.-based imprint Unwork Records.
