Crystal Castles' Ethan Kath discusses his musical partner Alice Glass: 'I can't believe this girl exists!'
“We’re taping two songs, but they will air only one for sure,” Kath says after he’s reached via phone on the Kimmel set. “It depends on the timing of the interview with Ice Cube, the guy from ‘Are We There Yet?’ If he doesn’t talk much, two of our songs will be aired. If he talks too much about his family movies, we get one song.”
Kath says this with the bemused tone of someone who can’t quite believe he’s sharing a stage with a Hollywood celebrity, let alone appearing on a network TV talk show.
He formed Crystal Castles six years ago in Toronto with rabblerousing singer Alice Glass, even though he was on the verge of scoring a record deal with his previous band, a more conventional garage-rock outfit.
“There were major labels flying in A&R guys to our shows,” he says. “We got offered a record deal, which was when I realized I couldn’t commit myself to this sound. We were basically a Stooges tribute band. We started out playing covers and then started writing originals that sounded like the covers. I felt like we were paying tribute to the past. That was really a cool thing to do to get free beer, but to sign a contract that now said we’re doing this for real, paying tribute to 1970 for the next 10 years, I said, ‘No thanks.’ I’d rather create something new, even if it wasn’t going to be popular.”
Ethan abandoned guitars and began writing noisy electro-punk songs on cheap keyboards. He stumbled into Glass on the Toronto scene playing with a riot grrrl band.
“Her band would play in this bar that attracted a lot of guys from ‘80s punk bands, these 45-year-old who’d be heckling her, and she’s spitting beer in their faces from the stage,” Kath says with a laugh. “This is what I walk into. I thought she’s the coolest thing I’ve ever met. I can’t believe this girl exists! I didn’t’ have faith in her band ever making it to a recording studio, so my main mission was to record her. I felt like someone needed to document this girl.”
A bit of serendipity – Kath recorded Glass uttering nonsense into a microphone over a drum loop – turned into the duo’s first single, “Alice Practice,” when it was released on a British label. It became a cult hit and prompted a well-received U.K. tour.
Since then, the band has put together two self-titled albums. The first, released in 2008, compiles the band’s early singles, including “Alice Practice.” The second, released a few months ago, was designed to be heard as a complete work. It presents a more melodic and atmospheric side of the band alongside its trademark abrasiveness. Along the way, the duo has evolved into a formidable live act, with the hooded Kath crouched over his keyboards, vocoder and sampler, while Glass whirls herself into a frenzy, often taking the audience with her. It’s an uncompromising style, but it has built an unexpectedly large fan base; on Friday, the duo headlines the 4000-capacity Congress Theatre.
“When Alice and I started the band, it was just about doing something cool and our fondest hope was that we might show up on a ‘Nuggets’-style compilation of lost bands in 2033,” Kath says. “We thought if we were lucky we would be one of those bands that people ‘discover’ 20 years after the fact. So when the first single sold out its initial run (of 500 copies) it was completely shocking. That feeling has never gone away.”
greg@gregkot.com
Crystal Castles: 6 p.m. Friday with Rusko, Sinden and the Twelves at the Congress Theatre, 2135 N. Milwaukee Av., $30; ticketweb.com.
Crystal Castles killed it at Lollapalooza 2009 and I can't wait to see them again on Friday! They were intense, gothic, and spooky. I love their aggressive electronic noise sound!!
Posted by: BigJoe | August 11, 2010 at 09:38 PM
New sound of 2K10: Witch Core. Or is it Ghost Rawk? Still regret not seeing them at Funky Buddha Lounge in 2006, bet that show was just gross.
Really impressed with this new album though, did not expect them to make something like this and really looking forward to Friday. Hopefully they've got a good sound engineer on this tour!
Posted by: Elvis Stojko | August 12, 2010 at 07:23 AM