We are not surprised to see that, on the occasion of their debut, the quartet Crawlers has gone all out and given his eager and excited fandom an ambitious double edition as an official presentation letter (with extra material, unreleased versions and so on). The occasion deserved it, and his landing in the saturated but always fruitful British scene could not have been more notable: from being a global trend on TikTok with “Come Over (Again)” to signing his heartfelt and visceral narrative with a multi like Polydor, going through personal milestones like opening for My Chemical Romance en su Liverpool Christmas.
With this context in mind, it is evident that Holly Minto and company started with a notable advantage in the race. “The Mess We Seem To Make” It comes to us after two previous EPs and almost five years of seeing those responsible for it lag behind their best version, hitting the stages of their country from end to end and forming a precious base of followers (baptized as the “Creepy Crawlers “), who now quilt with special devotion the long-awaited advent of their saving band.
But Crawlers don’t attract our attention just for having revived the fan phenomenon in guitar music or for having burst the listening meters with virally spreading hits. The honors and merits that Minto and his people achieve here are rather those of a generation willing to not keep quiet, to bend the loop of their honesty and to create lyrics free of prejudice in which they address topics as direct and foul-mouthed as the unnoticed and unpredictable blows of premature and chronic depression (“That Time Of Year Always”), the expiration of certain friendships that were significant in the past (“Would You Come To My Funeral?”), the challenge of understanding an early age what kind of love we deserve (“Call It Love”) or the recurring and festering wound of a bad relationship with sex (previously expressed in past songs like “Fuck Me (I Didn’t Know How To Say)” or “I Don’t Want It”, and now returns to the forefront of his imagination with “Meaningless Sex”).
It is clear through her intimate and vulnerable lyrics that neither her vast current recognition nor her precocious media emergence have been a problem for Minto, who has become the center of the scene by categorical imperative, to spare a hair when it comes to reciting her songs. cruder slogans (“Can you kiss me? Can you love me? How you fuck me? / I’d sell my body for you to want me,” we hear her sing in the bittersweet “Kiss Me”). However, the rise in decibels is not mandatory to generate his effusive catharsis, and it is precisely in his most reflective and peaceful moments where we appreciate the true evolution of his proposal throughout this succinct but intense journey (“I paid the doctor so “I could live happy, now I feel nothing at all,” he whispers over a bed of keys on “Golden Bridge”). All in all, it is this generous frankness in the story, added to an anachronistic combination of references from another era (a little bit of grunge here, a little bit of glam-rock there and a touch of 2000’s alternative rock on top), which makes Crawlers an offering that will not go unnoticed by those who appreciate the power of the new generations and the benefits of the best emerging dark pop.