Upside Down in Heaven

By the time the duo of Charles Rowell and Brandon Welchez recorded the eighth Crocodiles album, Upside Down in Heaven, they had explored many avenues of noise pop, from the hypnotic, drony sound of their earliest releases to the keyboard-heavy Dreamless and the ragged, garage punk clatter of their 2019 record Love Is Here. Upside Down takes a similar approach as the latter here, only stripping off most of the extraneous guitar clang and streamlining it into a sleek R&R machine -- one that loves bright, shiny melodies and has a death fixation. Most of the songs revolve around death in one way or another, which is not surprising considering the album was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. As titles like "Love Beyond the Grave," "Surfing with Death," and "Rock n Roll Graveyard" show, its not all gloom and doom though. In fact, it might be one of the hookiest-sounding death trips ever pressed on wax. Most of the album sounds like the Jesus and Mary Chain if someone had slipped the brothers some molly, or at times like a classic Dirtnap band had cleaned up their sound and found some fidelity. Crocodiles barely dial the rock level down below nine; when they do on the relatively lilting title track, they slip in the sneakiest melody, so the trade-off is well worth it. This might not be the most dramatic or the most inventive Crocodiles album yet, but it is their most immediate and catchiest record. Anyone wondering where all the good rock & roll bands are hiding in the early 2020s would do themselves a solid by checking out Upside Down in Heaven. ~ Tim Sendra