The Crisman aesthetic is captured nicely by Dowd’s work as a visual artist, which you can see on the cover. Combining acrylics and spray paint in playful primary colours, she explores the anxieties of a young adult through the lens of a child, capturing emotion and unease through blocks of colour and frowning blob figures. But there’s something heartwarming about the paintings too, a sense of direct and unashamed naivety that sidesteps the sour irony that hangs in the air around much “juvenile” art.

Which brings us on to the music. Building on the foundations of bedroom pop heavyweights like Florist and Frankie Cosmos, Crisman’s songs are sweet and unfussy but still get to the heart of some pretty deep feelings. Sometimes lazily languid and others perky and upbeat, the band use sound like Dowd uses colour, ostensibly bright compositions with an inconspicuous complexity. Ultimately, as Topshelf put it, music is just “yet another medium for masking emotional turmoil with innocence.”

Take opener ‘Portrait’, which starts all wistful and delicate as Dowd sings “wisdom comes with time, grandma says we’re all fine,” before ambling into a reassuringly positive-sounding chorus. It’s a song about both hope and fear of the unknown, about trying to stop and appreciate the present before rushing into the future.

Crisman also have more than enough idiosyncrasies to carve out a niche of their own. For every moment of gently melodic indie pop there’s something a little off-kilter. Perhaps the best example are the staccato riffs on lead single ‘Surprise’, but the album is littered with such moments. Like the end of ‘Cya’, which pairs Dowd’s soft vocals with squealing guitar distortion and thudding percussion, or the second half of ‘Go’ which takes the intimate bedroom pop vibe and expands it widescreen with crashing drums.

This theme continues right through to finale ‘Pawn’, which begins quiet and hesitant before blooming into perhaps the closest thing to an indie rock song on the record. Clocking in at over five minutes, it’s the longest and maybe the loudest track too, closing with an outro that’s every bit as colourful and energetic as Dowd’s paintings.

Crisman is out now and you can get it via Topshelf Records and the Crisman Bandcamp page.

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Today we have the pleasure of unveiling second track, and again the spring imagery is present in the title. However, the song does not plump for the stereotypical springtime vibe of wonder and joy, instead opting for something a little more unsettled. Despite it’s minimal nature, ‘Swallow’ is impressively atmospheric, gauzy guitar and soft percussion swirling around Patrello’s gently mumbled vocals. As such, the track possesses an air of numbness, the melancholy repressed within the murmured vocals though implied through the sedate tempo. This eventually rises into something a little more upbeat, the track finding a sparkled groove once the vocals have finished, though the words that came before offer a bittersweet context.

“I never saw you
That’s what I like
I’ll take ’em all dude
That’s Friday night
Fall down and drink up
That’s what I like
Swallow after suck
That’s Friday night”

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Opener ‘Made You Look’ sets the tone, a noisy, frenetic song with all its glorious imperfections left in. “The temperature is rising in the room”, sings bassist Elana, “more people file in, it doesn’t get any better”, before a headlong dive into what proves a celebration of live music and all its energy and joy. ‘Any Minute’ is slightly more restrained but no less upbeat, the chirpy guitars and skipping percussion sounding like a UK twee-pop band who have packed up the xylophone and taken their amps into a garage. The lyrics are surprisingly sombre however, like the downer thoughts of a self-conscious teen:

“What a way to start the day,
Man, my gums are really sore.
I could use my body but,
I don’t really know what for.

I could wake up any minute

Tried to stay still to recall my dreams.
The last thing I saw was a baby you.
Are we ever gonna feel like friends?
Are you even trying to?”

If ‘Any Minute’ was two-tone, then ‘Cold Wet Towel Blues’ is out-and-out miserable (“I cry alone with my stories and these ‘Cold Wet Towel Blues’ / On the phone with my girlfriends, I’ve smoked away the afternoon”). Even here though, the misery is framed in a nostalgic fondness, an adolescent pride in being fucked up for a while, a pleasant, self-indulgent melancholy that will pass as day becomes night. Indeed, ‘Vague Rant’ sees things pick up again, the song heavier and with the killer sing-along chorus (Feeling like a vagrant! Vagrant! Vague rant!), and ‘UR = UO’ is similarly defiant, packed with the uncompromising punk attitude and social critique:

“You spent it all, there’s no escape.
What once was shelter is now just real estate.

Don’t act brand new, you know what it is!
Dig your own grave and then teach your kids

I’m not throwing “slave” around, but know you’re no one without something to sell. I’m not telling you your life. I’m just showing you my hell. You are what you owe”

‘Book’ is another track which captures the live experience, Elana and Philip’s vocals rising through the drums without ever quiet breaking the surface, not so much fighting the instrumentation but surrendering to its energy. Closer ‘Ska’s Not Dead’ is an ode to the punk/ska phase that all punk players go through (at least according to No Touching’s Bandcamp page). The track uses some cool nicknames and phrases to create a surprisingly vivid picture of people clinging on to old passions, with Skinhead Ray in his Old Rude Van taking the narrator down memory lane with a trip to see The English Beat. “Ska’s not dead. No! Ska’s not dead,” shouts Ray, “SKA WILL NEVER BE DEAD TO ME”.

You can buy Look now from the No Touching Bandcamp page. Be sure to check out their previous releases while you’re there.

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