Dubbing them the “Deleted Years,” Dave Holmes wrote for Esquire in 2019, [t]he music of the mid-aughts to early-teens is largely gone, lost down a new-millennium memory hole.” He attributes this cultural corona to the collapse of the traditional music industry (and PR machine) and the way the invention of technology (like the iPod, which played downloaded music) quickly became superseded by newer technology (like the iPhone, which played streamed music). If the music of the 1970s lives on on vinyl, the 1980s on cassette tape, and the 1990s on CD, the music of the ‘00s dies entombed on hard drives and Zunes in landfills and junk drawers.
All of this brings me to my search for the Crystal Antlers’ EP. Like any guitar-music geek, I immediately purchased a download of the late-60’s indebted noise rock band after reading Ian Cohen’s 8.5 rave on Pitchfork from the summer of 2008. My roommates and I listened to the hell out of that album, hoping it would herald a new wave of noisy, rocking guitar bands. That didn’t exactly happen, although the prosaic Black Keys would sell a shitload of downloads.
Crystal Antlers would release three more records, only one of which I bought (their letdown of a debut, Tentacles), and then disappeared into the recesses of my memory…until, for whatever reason, I thought about them yesterday.
Actually, that’s not quite true, I thought of “that one noisy garage band with the one good EP and the not-so-good album.” I didn’t remember their name. Why would I? It’s the most Deleted Years band name possible (outside of perhaps something “wolf”). Sandwiched between Crystal Castles and The Antlers – though their music doesn’t really sound like either band – Crystal Antlers name exists in a no man’s land. It doesn’t describe their music, and it’s not stupid enough to be remembered. “King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard” may not be illustrative of what type of music their band makes, but it’s goofy enough to get stuck in your dome. Crystal Antlers would’ve been better off with a name like DisORGANized, which honors the prominence of a B3-style keyboard, or something that tied them to their caterwauling late 60s roots; may I recommend the lead off track from The Stooges’ Fun House “Down on the Street.”
I should also say that for as much as Crystal Antlers whiffed on their band name, they killed it at album art. EP has a goat’s eye (or is it labia?) amid a swirl of psychedelic colors and Tentacles has a watercolored rainbow of balloons (or are they berries?). They’re both striking, and pop even as thumbnails, so I could identify the albums by sight.
I tried Googling “garage rock albums 2007 to 2009.” A list of good, memorable albums popped up, but not Crystal Antlers’. Then I went to allmusic.com to see if I could hunt them through their “Related Bands” tab. No luck. They weren’t related to Ty Segall (who would release very similar sounding music a couple years later) and I didn’t recognize their name on the page for Comets on Fire (who released similar sounding music a couple years before them).
So I went back to my music collection from 2008. I literally booted up an old desktop, fired up the Window Media Player library with the grid of album covers, and clicked through the screen. For some reason I started with Z. Fifteen minutes later I found them.
EP sounded as good as I remember, and Tentacles, while not as strong as EP, sounded better than I remember. While EP, I imagine, aims to capture the feel of their live show, on Tentacles the band seems to try to rein in their sound. Its songs are shorter and less hairy, the organ takes on more prominence than the guitars, and the dynamics are flatter. It’s less lively than EP. Critics took notice. Pitchfork awarded Tentacles a not awful 6.7, but a rating that nonetheless felt like a disappointment after so much hype for EP.
Holmes wrote that not every artist who gained prominence during the Deleted Years vanished without a trace. Lady Gaga, Rhianna, and the reigning Queen of America Taylor Swift got their start during the Deleted Years, but their careers outlasted them as well. Alas, Crystal Antlers’ would not.
Much of this is due to bad luck. Tentacles had the misfortune of being the last record released on the venerable indie label Touch and Go before they stopped putting out new music at all. And the band suffered through line-up changes. I don’t know the specifics of their band issues, but I will say that critical acclaim does not necessarily equate to a livable paycheck, and it certainly doesn’t cure ego or addiction problems.
Crystal Antlers released their last album on October 15, 2013. It’s recorded even cleaner than Tentacles. Writing nine years ago, one of the three Youtube comments says [with some editing for coherence], “This one is good, but only ‘Paper Thin’ and ‘Persephone’ remind me of the glory of Crystal Antlers EP. Something is lost. It’s sad that from a unique, outstanding and one-of-a-kind band, they transformed into regular indie-rock followers.” Yeah, pretty much that. Crystal Castles evolved from a shaggy psychedelic garage band to a pretty standard indie rock band.
Their last album is fittingly called Nothing is Real, which, considering the band’s career was swallowed by the Deleted Years, seems pretty apt. The band’s Facebook was last updated in 2020, their X is defunct, and their homepage crystalantlers.com can be had for $8,595. Maybe Crystal Antlers was just a dream?
Nah, we still have the music. And EP still kicks.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a28904211/2003-to-2012-forgotten-music-era/