Live Review: Union Pool
By: Sam Houghton
June 18, 2009
Rating: 7/11

Sunny San Diego! Enough said. Not sure why people live in Russia or places like that, or the Northeast for that matter, when there’s sunny San Diego with bands like The Crocodiles. The Crocodiles didn’t bring the happy weather with them, punks, but they happened to bring some good vibes to our dark weathered, Northeast city while playing an amped-up show to a packed crowd at Union Pool last Thursday, June 18th.

For grunge fans hearing drum machines and synthesizers, we automatically sigh and our minds fall into this horrible vortex, some sort of wild retraction to that weird time when mamas dressed in leopard skin leotards and pranced around to Pat Benatar and Donna Summers… awful images. True or not, Disco reigned over America like a malicious, blood sucking wilder-beast for over one decadent and shameful decade. It was probably fun, but one of those, “had to be there, on weird club drugs” situations. Well, The Crocodiles have brought the drum machine and synthesizer back, but fortunately, unless your one of those feverish-dancing freaks from the past with shiny leotards folded neatly in your closet, it has not come full circle. No, there were no sparkling disco balls in Union Pool, and, sadly, no leopard skin leotards either, but there was a thick crowd, mostly the leather jackets and jeans and Pabst drinking crowd, witnessing a less flashy and more whiskey blues influenced return of synthesizers and computer contrived drumbeats. Despite technology, it got primitive.

The Crocodiles, a blooming band from the refreshed Fat Possum label, may not be the progenitors of this new movement, mixing raunchy blues grunge with those old, feverish synthesizers and drum machines, but they are certainly contributing. Underground bands in our area, like Orange Oven, Free Blood, Fall on Your Sword and several others, are using fat keyboards and suitcases lined-up all over the floor with weird foot gadgets to contrive these new sounds. It’s more than shoegazing. Screen gazing, or maybe “Push Button Pop” (copyright that one). Beck, for a more popular example, or better yet, Radiohead, has really got it punching and moving, despite the synths’ weird and gruesome history.

The Crocodiles have nailed it. Their sound is ruckus and ballsy with a poppy, dance-like quality, and twangy grit shooting straight for the savage glands: just two guys with two guitars, some computer equipment and other things the average laymen doesn’t have time to understand but Pink Floyd most certainly had their hands on. It was surprising the amount of noise the two dudes made, the different levels and sounds booming, and was that the drone of a bagpipe in their somewhere? It’s something very similar to Jack White and his erratic, zany guitars combined with, well, disco fever. The big single of the night, “I Wanna Kill” (which most of the crowd at Union Pool recognized), had a few tough guys dancing. “Summer of Hate” was my personal favorite, a drum pounding number with cool, surf like guitars. It was a fun show that might turn the cold, New York tough guy grip into a more fun-loving, soothing dude. Only complaint here was that the singing was sometimes hard to hear, maybe cause the roar from the music was too loud, or the lack of technology on Union’s part got in the way. But it was great to see that grunge is still alive and that there’s still a strong audience for the raunchy, kick ass side of rock-and-roll.

Editor's Note: An altered version of this article originally appeared on Groovemine, a website focused on independent music.