Brad Hargett, Andy Adler, and Kyle Forester of Crystal Stilts perform at Webster Hall in Manhattan in mid-September 2013.
This piece dates from fall 2013.
Issue an album called “Nature Noir” and you never know how nature might respond. Crystal Stilts, the veteran psych-pop band from Brooklyn, struck celestial gold: just before its record-release show at Other Music on Monday, Sept. 16, the sunset shimmered before a cool, moonlit night fell over the city.
Performing in front of simple, psychedelic projections, vocalist Brad Hargett led the five-piece through eight songs, starting with “Spirit in Front of Me,” a reverb-drenched leviathan that opens the new album. More than 75 listeners packed the space, nodding and clapping, and store staff sold vinyl and CD copies of the LP, the band’s third.
After the show, as Hargett and bassist Andy Adler walked towards a rendezvous on St. Mark’s Place, a fan approached the singer with a collection of vinyl for him to sign, including Crystal Stilts’ first release, a 2003 single featuring “Shattered Shine,” a rumbly, lo-fi ode to the nocturnal dynamism of New York.
Hargett autographed the records and told the fan, whom he recognized, that he would see him later that week at Webster Hall, where Crystal Stilts would open for indie luminaries Deerhunter on two consecutive nights.
“That doesn’t happen that often,” Hargett said, smiling, after the fan began to walk away.
The Webster concerts kick off the band’s 46-date tour in support of “Nature Noir.” The itinerary includes a stop at the Bowery Ballroom on Oct. 31, and European dates in Oslo, Hamburg, and London in November, and in Paris and Zurich in early December.
The new record features seven mid-tempo, guitar-based songs that mostly eschew wistful pop moments for stony, repetitive grooves, and three tracks in which acoustic instruments, including strings, fashion lightened contrasts to the steady churn.
Live, the songs had the “same air, but moving in a slightly different direction” as Crystal Stilts’ older material, said Hannah Pierce, 20, who attended the show at Other Music.
Pierce’s impression carries over to the studio versions. On “Spirit” and “Future Folklore,” the bright organ melodies that enliven some of the band’s signature songs, like the eponymous track from its debut long-player, 2009’s “Alight of Night,” are mostly absent.
“JB [Townsend, Crystal Stilts’ guitarist and tunesmith] was trying to write songs that aren’t based on guitar leads,” Hargett said.
Hargett’s lyrics, difficult to discern live, also reflect a shift. Intricate rhymes and stygian imagery characterize his writing on “Alight of Night,” and while the lines grow simpler on 2011’s “In Love With Oblivion,” the images stay dark. But gentler lines like “Forget about the afterlife / Multiply the laughter” grace the new release.
“I wanted to write in a simpler fashion,” the singer explained, heading up Bowery to St. Mark’s. “I wanted to try and be a little bit more off the cuff and do things that would have a more emotional response, as opposed to the first couple records that were a bit more cerebral.”
“Nature Noir” drops about five years after Crystal Stilts emerged as one of a budding group of Brooklyn bands that processed alt-rock influences through low-fi filters. Stilts tunes from the period combined the Velvet Underground’s guitar sound with the gothic haze of arty, ’80s English pop; label mates The Pains of Being Pure at Heart updated the nakedly romantic sensibilities of The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian; and Vivian Girls, whose original drummer, Frankie Rose, later joined the Stilts for a spell, blended the off-kilter jangle of The Raincoats into a sweet punk crush.
For Hargett, there was fun in numbers. Speaking over the jukebox at Grassroots Tavern, the divey basement bar on St. Mark’s, the singer recalled performing for about 1,000 people at Barcelona’s Primavera Festival in 2009. After Crystal Stilts’ set, he stood offstage and watched Vivian Girls and The Pains rock the crowd.
“You’re sort of like, ‘Wow, we came from playing these shows in Brooklyn in front of 30 people, and now we’re doing this,’” Hargett said.
More than four years later, the singer doesn’t often see his friends from the local scene of yore. Life in the band feels more self-contained.
“As the years have gone on, everybody sort of goes their own way, and that sort of fades,” he said, speaking of the social life of the scene. “Now it’s just writing with a band…and everybody has their individual lives.”
Hargett, 36, also mentioned that his parents’ expectations of him have shifted since 2003, when he and Townsend starting composing together in New York.
“Your parents want to be like, ‘Okay, he’s set with what he’s doing, I can stop being a parent and stop worrying about it,’” he said, a few weeks away from leaving his job at a student loan company in Union Square to go on tour. “But you’re in your mid-30s and that’s not necessarily going to happen.”
But “Nature Noir” offers evidence of an inner stability. In “Phases Forever,” the album’s closer, a gentle strum washes up against Hargett’s meditation on growing older. “The greater the gravity / the stronger the star / The more that we have to be / the more that we are,” he intones.
“The fact that I’ve taken it this far is still wild to me,” he said. “I feel blessed.“
Crystal Stilts’ upcoming 10-date tour concludes at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on June 27.