The Singles Jukebox

Taylor exhumes the vaults for How to Dress Well’s first appearance in 10 years…

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Taylor Alatorre: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Those six iconic words of American jurisprudence were penned by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., dean of the Progressive-era Supreme Court and son of the 19th century physician-poet who co-founded The Atlantic. The case was Buck v. Bell (1927), where an 8-1 majority upheld the 1924 Virginia law that allowed for the compulsory sterilization of Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old who was deemed “feeble-minded” after being forcibly impregnated by a member of her foster family. By the time FDR entered the White House, a majority of U.S. states had enacted sterilization laws modeled after Virginia’s, and the first eugenics law passed by Nazi Germany in 1933 used language lifted from the Virginia statute; Holmes’ majority opinion was later cited in the defense of an SS officer at the Nuremberg trials. Of the more than 60,000 Americans sterilized in the wake of Buck v. Bell, disproportionately immigrants and people of color, a sizable though unknowable portion were those who would today be classified as autistic or developmentally disabled. When considering Buck v. Bell, I’ve lately been drawn not to the coldly lucid prose of Holmes Jr., but to the nonexistent prose of the lone dissenter in the case, the conservative Catholic justice Pierce Butler. For reasons unexplained, Butler did not write a dissenting opinion, so one must assume that his traditional religious values left him unable to sign off on the then-ascendent scientific doctrine of eugenics. He was derided in his time as an agrarian relic and a roadblock to New Deal progress, which he most often was. Against one of the foremost judicial atrocities of 20th century America, however, Pierce Butler stood alone, in silent defiance. “Crypt Sustain” is a song about neurodivergence and survival, but it’s also a song about silence and reticence, and the importance of being misunderstood. From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the “nature paintings” and line drawings of his late brother Dan, Tom Krell posits that the creation of art is a defining value of humanity; so far so good, most would say. More radical is his suggestion that art has value even when it is not understood, or seen or heard, by anyone other than its creator. This goes further than the typical avant-garde opposition to art as a saleable commodity, as it encompasses those who, for want of ability, are blocked from entry into even the countercultural ranks. The category of “artist,” throughout human history, has been shaped by selection bias: what of those who lacked the means or wherewithal or even the simple confidence to ever put pen to paper or brush to canvas? Did their ideas die with them, and if so, can they be said to have existed at all? “The inside is where the details are,” intones Dan through the static when discussing his visual art. This privileging of interiority over outward-facing expression is at the center of “Crypt Sustain,” beginning with the title: the crypt is the incubator of memory, whether in artistic or genetic form, big enough to house both the famous and the unwillingly anonymous. It is that which we both “carry with us” as individuals and “share within us” as a collective, and the switch between these two verse-ending phrases is laden with meaning. Here is a thunderous affirmation of the notions that “we are all one species” and “we are all connected,” ideas that are mocked not because they are wrong but because their full implications are rarely explored. It is a rejoinder to those who have discomfort in acknowledging that Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg share a similar neurotype; to those would mark off autism as a postmodern fad or a “chronic disease,” to be eradicated within a few generations; to those whose vision of human utility requires the prenatal elimination of Down syndrome; to those whose vision of human progress requires the mauling by dog of a Palestinian man with Down syndrome (“Abyssinian children” is the most poetic form of self-censorship I have ever encountered). But beyond all of that, “Crypt Sustain” is a funereal celebration of all the art that never got seen or created. On paper, the lines about dreams “pulling back” and memories “retracting” come off as appropriately mournful and reflective. On record, though, the tone is a cracked sort of triumph, with high-pitched peals of melody punctuated by power chords of silence, and a wordless minute-long intro that airlifts a lighter-waving Slash guitar line into a secluded mountain monastery. It’s indulgent in the best sense of the word, and it’s how Krell managed to write a protest song against ableism that doesn’t veer into condescension. The climactic explosion of blast beat drumming is, on one level, ludicrously silly — a half-formed theory of black metal as some primeval strain that was here before us and will long after us remain. But if you put aside the postgraduate lenses for a moment, you’re left with a poignant tribute to a “brutally underpaid and overworked janitor,” whose love for this music was as sincere as the artwork he designed for his brother’s newest album. 
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Katherine St. Asaph: In which Tom Krell decides his heroes are no longer Justin Vernon and Derek Menswear, but Chris Martin.
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Alfred Soto: An excuse for cool guitar skronks and crushed-seashell bits of melody, “Crypt Sustain” sustains a tone if not quite a mood.
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Nortey Dowuona: The raging, seething guitar chords enhanced by Trayer Tryon’s guitar pedals gird the song so deeply that Tom Krell’s thin voice disappears once they reappear. The drums, bass and even the other guitar melodies just cannot cope with the heavy nature of those chords, and so they swallow the whole mix.
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Tim de Reuse: If you’re gonna switch from low acoustic murmurs into jarring noise then you can’t half-ass it. You gotta commit to something that’ll offend the mild-mannered ear. All these slimy guitars, the white noise blanketing the lead synth, the 2015-ass autotune — it’s trying to come off as odd but it’s scared to come off as weird. It’s pulling punches, not terribly inventive, but the worst sin of all is that it’s trying, and this I’m unable to forgive. Even the quadruple-time kick drums that try to kick off the big finale aren’t bassy enough to rattle your skull, so what’s the point? They pass right though me. The whole thing kind of passes right through me.
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Jel Bugle: Quite inspiring in the “if I tried, I could make this kind of music” way. I liked the nice nasty guitar sounds and spoken bits at the start — great stuff. The dude singing was a bit weak, but when his voice got distorted, that was much better. Must be pretty good live. 
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Ian Mathers: I mean this 100% sincerely, and as high praise: this feels like it could have been on the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This is less a pop song and more a great swallowing-up, the kind of grandiose concatenation of sound that would sound ridiculous if each fragment that makes up its whole were not so artfully struck. When you try to find Tom Krell in this, a small force at the center of a maelstrom, you have to really listen to hear what he’s saying; the repeated phrases, the invocations of crypts and meaning, the sense of loss. 
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