Cray Bags – Beauty Love
Change can be a scary thing. Scary, intimidating, and daunting more often than not. However, to survive as a band, change is a necessity. Creative ruts are one of the easiest pitfalls for otherwise fantastic bands to fall into. Luckily, Cray Bags has had no problem at all fully embracing change, even going so far as to discard their old moniker of Crazy Bag Lady and adopting their sleek, shiny, new name.
Along with their new band name, Cray Bags has also taken a major departure from the sound of their debut album, Hunks. While their first album had the essentials of the band’s chaotic, sometimes dissonant post-punk, the record overall was a bit more polished than expected, at least for me. Hearing Sterno’s vocals in a crisp and clear manner was a stark difference from the familiar shouts and grunts Savannah locals had come to love from the band’s frenzied shows. Not different in a bad way mind you, just different.
With Beauty Love, Cray Bags takes does a complete 180° with their recording style. Gone are the pristine vocal tracks and sharply mastered instrumental tracks. Beauty Love instead sports a much more rugged, slightly fuzzy sound. The experience is a much more vintage feeling one, as if you picked up an older sibling’s Bad Brains or Circle Jerks cassette. The entire sound is what you would expect from a live performance by Cray Bags: visceral, slightly groovy, and a lot of fun.
Beauty Love isn’t available to the public just yet, and while a definite release date isn’t set (as far as I know at least), with any luck, it’s coming soon. A lucky few of you probably grabbed a download code for the album back in February at one of Cray Bags’ live shows and if you haven’t downloaded it yet, stop sleeping on it and give it a listen. As for everyone else, well, let’s just hope Beauty Love drops soon!
