IAN SWEET
Crush Crusher
- LP$17Add to Cart
- CD$13Add to Cart
- Cassette$7Add to Cart
- Digital$10Add to Cart
- First LP pressing on limited orange swirl-colored vinyl
- LPs and CDs include a digital album download, available on release day
- Cassette format does not include a digital album download
- A t-shirt is also available for pre-order
Much of Crush Crusher’s songs deal with Medford’s internalized pressure to become a caretaker in many of her close friends’ lives. As a defense mechanism for her own insecurities, Medford projects a sense of invincibility and benevolence to feel more deserving of the love received from others; we hear this on “Holographic Jesus” when she repeats the phrase “the sun built me to shade everybody,” characterizing the sacrifice and responsibility she feels in ways that could easily go unnoticed. “Holographic Jesus” ultimately represents a façade of strength that Medford has clung onto and, in true Taurus fashion, is stubborn to let go of.
Musically, Crush Crusher is full of dissonant open chords and abnormal progressions, finding beauty in a level of conflict not seen on Shapeshifter. To help achieve this expansive-but-focused sound, Medford enlisted the help of someone who was just as ambitiously experimental in their approach, producer and engineer Gabe Wax (Deerhunter, The War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy). Medford and Wax set up shop at Rare Book Room studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and completed the basic tracking with musicians Simon Hanes on bass and Max Almario on drums. “Coming into a space where some of my biggest inspirations like Bjork, Dirty Projectors, and Deerhunter had all once also recorded, I felt determined to push myself and test every boundary that I may have subconsciously created along the way. Gabe made me feel comfortable with attempting anything,” Medford says. By the end of the recording process, IAN SWEET wound up with an unconventional assortment of songs featuring disparate elements of psych- rock, trip-hop, and shoegaze that together forged a sound uniquely her own.
Product Info
- Type:
- Album
- Release Date:
- October 26, 2018
- Catalog No:
- 73110
- Label:
- Hardly Art
Tracks
- Hiding
- Spit
- Holographic Jesus
- Bug Museum
- Question It
- Crush Crusher
- Falling Fruit
- Borrowed Body
- Ugly/Bored
- Your Arms Are Water