Chalk Album Review: Crystalpunk
(ALTER)
BY JORDAN MAINZER
According to Belfast duo Chalk, the project of vocalist and producer Ross Cullen and multi-instrumentalist Benedict Goddard, the club is where you can go to feel, work through, and ultimately conquer your anguish. Their debut album Crystalpunk collects sounds that suggest an emotional spectrum--pained vocal turns, wincing drops of noise, giddy synth arpeggios--and lays them over pummeling beats, as if to emphasize the dance floor as the center stage for living. Throughout the record, Cullen embodies different personas, from the self-destructive and -aggrandizing to the lovelorn and devoted; eventually, he looks outward.
Though each song on Crystalpunk stands tall on its own and is catchy enough to be a single, the album is effective as a front-to-back arc, as Cullen's navel gazing slowly dissipates and his reach widens. "Do I Go back to Hell / Or should I go fuck myself?" he sings nihilistically on opener "Tongue", his vocals building to screams along with Fiontan McAleavy's battering drums. On "Pain", he purports to a loved one, "I feel your pain / It hurts cause I'm not around," as the percussion pans and the synth line loops, an all-encompassing contrast to his claims of absence. "Can't Feel It", however, represents a turning point. The song's about a secret first kiss Cullen had with a friend when he was younger, more broadly illustrative of the simultaneous excitement and loneliness of love. "When I was young / I had a friend that I loved / Made me promise / You better keep your mouth shut," he sings. The song's heartbreaking but also an instant anthem for anyone who's had a similar experience. From there, Chalk continue to reflect. On "One-Nine-Eight-Zero", which sees McAleavy and co-producer Chris W Ryan guest on drums, Cullen recalls some childhood trauma ("I sat on top the stairs and watched my daddy leave") before pleading, "Can we go back to the year one-nine-eight-zero?" His admitted yearning matches the song's retrofuturist aesthetic, vocoded vocals and a four-on-the-floor beat.
For many bands, a mid-album, minute-long interlude is a throwaway track, but Chalk are sneaky. The droning "Eclipse", on which Cullen sings, muted, "I see the light / It hurts," is the result of the therapy session, his wounds still raw. Accepting his own torment allows him to unleash a track like "Béal Feirste", Crystalpunk's euphoric climax. It's somewhere between the skittering electronica of Fuck Buttons and timeless techno of Underworld's "Born Slippy (Nuxx)", perhaps a spiritual sibling to the latter the way Cullen repeatedly deadpan chants "shoulder to shoulder." In the song's third verse, he declares, "Well, Jesus Christ ain't a savior of mine / I put all my faith into the ones I got;" considering that Cullen grew up with a Protestant mother and Catholic father in Northern Ireland, the statement carries extra weight. In a world that attempts to separate us all, Crystalpunk unifies.