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50173
Type: Album Release date: 17/10/2005
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“Only takes one black cloud to ruin a bright day/ I was the black cloud, she was the bright day” rasps Davey MacManus on ‘Opposite Ends’. Lyrically Tragedy Rocks is as uplifting as a mouse infested bedsit lit by a naked bulb. But for all his obsession with the seamier end of melancholy, this is an album stuffed with effortlessly hummable hooks and choruses.

At times fuzzy, loose and lo-fi, at others bombastic and grandiose, The Crimea have an instinct for the appropriate. Whether it’s the Joy Zipper like slacker lollop of ‘Baby Boom’ or the hushed bank of harmonies on ‘Gazillions of Minature Violins’ – which sound like Flaming Lips marinated in gin – the arrangements never swamp the songs. And McManus’ voice, quavering, stretching and choking its way around the tunes, makes sure it always sounds very human.

Like the Flaming Lips too, the songs feel simultaneously familiar and peculiar. Each intro sounds like something you haven’t heard for ages and can’t quite place. But then the often humourously disquieting lyrics appear and undercut the pop classicism (“sometimes I think you could be more than just a punch bag with lipstick on” for example). Occasionally things veer off course into pastiche overload, like the faux Nick Cave gothery in the verses of ‘Someone’s Crying’, but even that redeems itself musically in the chorus.

There are enough ideas here for two albums but instead it’s boiled down into one restlessly economic one. Suitably for a band named after the site of a famous conflict, the album is a battle between opposing forces – bleakness and humour, beauty and ugliness, pure pop and musical interest. Sometimes that works, sometimes it implodes, but it never stays still.

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Finally a Crimea album !

Hurrah !

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Seconded - seem to have been waiting forever for this. I almost started to give up on ever hearing an album until I saw them at Leeds and fell in love with them again. Here's hoping they get the deserved recognition the Crocketts never really got

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Its really good.

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Man, I'd forgotten about this band. I saw them live about 18 months ago, and I thought they were great. Might give this album a go when finances allow.

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

The Crockets were ace !
One of the best live bands i've ever seen.
Such a shame they never made it big.

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

I'm sure Mrs B has had this album for what seems like a year. Hmmm. I don't much care for it, to be honest. It's a bit...meh.

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

I’ve loved Baby Boom for a long time but found the rest of the album didn’t really live up to the expectations that this created.

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Crimea are on tour soon I think, I'll check out the band on that.

I remember Peel playing them quite a lot and was quite impressed with them.

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

I bought the album from their website over a year ago, quite liked it, but it seems this is a re-recording of some sort. Does anyone know if it sounds much different/better?

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Think its a re-recording with a few new tracks and a couple missing. If they are the new ones I heard live recently its definetely worth getting. Its gonna be the first album I've ever bought twice. Now thats a recomendation!

Re: The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Yeah, I remember JP playing "Lottery Winners On Acid", what a cracking tune that is. I'm gonna have to buy this album I reckon :)

The Crimea - Tragedy Rocks

Great Review. it never stays still.

The Crimea

does or does this not have lottery winners on acid on it? If it does, I'm buying it. Simple as.

The Crimea

does.

Still the same...

... still mediocre. It's been out and about in one form or another for an age. Could paint by Ash by more boring....

I was born on a mountain in Tenessee.....

Ever since I first saw the Crocketts, (sometime in the mid-late 90's, supporting Levellers) I fell in love..... Davy singing 'only one of us is on something' while behaving like a crazed and drugged lunatic on stage grabbed my attention and shook it until I listened. This in turn made me buy their debut, 'We May Be Skinny and Wiry' as soon as was humanly possible.... 'The Great Brain Robbery' came next, and kept me just as interested... then I had to wait... The Crocketts split up, so I spent my time downloading demos or anything else I could find, and trying to go see The Crimea live....... Then this album came out, and it's just as good as anything the Crocketts did, if more refined, and 'matured'..... both musically and lyrically..... apparently, Davy's no longer the hedonistic frontman he was in the Crocketts, and the music reflects that, and it's made it better....

'She goes tripping, I go falling over'

FINALLY

some recognition for this ace band

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