My Review: Cruush - Stick in the Mud / Sombre by the Weekend

 Cruush - Stick in the Mud / Sombre by the Weekend

Playing at home, if you have to write about music and the city is Manchester (England), is a beautiful and simple act, given the multitude of good offerings and many of them powerful, to the delight of the old scribe who is excited and satisfied.

If we then talk about Cruush, a quartet dedicated to a splendid exercise in combining shoegaze with an alternative that spans its boundaries, then the result can only be enchanting.

They churn out songs with great ease and their latest Single reveals how hard work and talent do not struggle to produce stout, sinuous textures.

Stick in the Mud is a collection of searching shards of light, a collision between shoegaze stylings and the possibilities of introducing multifaceted alternative patterns to deliver sensitive, nourishing guitars to the listener.  Amber Warren's voice is perfectly capable of raising the hairs of the skin with its angelic vocal that reminds us how certain strings are the expression of absolute grace. Her guitar and Arthur Boyd's guitar create whirlwinds of notes that are perfectly noisy, rebellious, magnetic, with a loop that enchants. 

With Sombre by the Weekend we witness the approach of Dreampop flamboyance and the cohabitation of a celestial stop-and-go exercise capable of bestowing poetry and serenity.

Two tracks that see Will Milton's bass revealing all the sweetness and at the same time the strength to recall the astonishment of a predisposition to protect the notes of the whole band, and Fotis Kalantzis' drumming secure, energetic, perfect.

Lockdown was the driving force behind these songs and it must be acknowledged that sparks of wonder-coloured life can often arise from difficulties.

This combo of compositions deserves your listening and the whole thing will be a kiss in the clouds satisfied with the city that continues to produce goodies upon goodies…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

26th February 2023

https://cruushband.bandcamp.com/track/stick-in-the-mud

https://cruushband.bandcamp.com/track/sombre-by-the-weekend