The Crooks and Nannies are a band I have some fondness over, but not too much. Like some of my other favorites I think Spotify’s discover weekly feature brought them to my attention and I then promptly only listened to one of their songs, Carry Me. If you’re a regular reader of the review column you should know by now that younger me had a habit of forgetting that singles usually come from full albums. And by younger me, I mean me still because I did the same thing with some of Chappell Roans singles. By the way, I'm not sure if i'll publically review it but Midwest Princess is really good!
Relistening to Ugly Laugh for this review brings back a lot of memories of high school, blasting this on the way to work or while driving around my hometowns more barren industrial area, through winding woods past shipping yards and train cars full of scrap metals. Life is sort of like that, winding forest roads where all the ugly workings of a city get tucked away out of sight of the more affluent. It’s meant to be ignored, shoved to one side, relegated to a lower class but life, I mean winding forest roads, can be enjoyed by anyone with the ability to see it. We take an area of natural beauty and fill it with machines, but the area is still beautiful. It just wears the scars of its past and present. To ignore it because of those scars and blemishes are to disregard life as something worth seeing every inch of.
Something something, cathedrals for those with eyes to see them, something something.
Oh yeah the album. It’s good, pounding kick drum and electric guitar give the whole thing a nice rhythm or something like that. It’s not really about the album itself. The songs can be total crap (though these ones aren’t,) It’s about the memories you have with it, the influence it had on you. If you came here for hard journalism on the composition and performance of the Crooks and Nannies then look elsewhere, or listen to the album for yourself and let it have an impact on you. Ugly Laugh is available for streaming and purchase everywhere, including BandCamp where you can name your own price.
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