Crosss : "LO"

 I've been looking forward to this album, as I have like everything I heave heard from these Canadians up until this point. From the opening song its clear that while there is a doom-ish side to what they do it is wrestling against their indie rock side. The indie rock song tends to dominate the vocals, with fuzzed out guitar and big burly bass plodding behind to provide most of the beef."Eye Senance" gets darker than the opener, the vocals taking a less conventional melody line. They achieve something of creepy beauty on here. Many bands call themselves occult, but don't achieve anything more than a retor feel, while these guys and gals touch on moments that could be from the score of a horror movie, colliding with the unease in a very angular path. They seem to be digging deeper into thicker heavier tones with each songs. It sounds like male vocals come in for "Golden Hearth" , but they are rather androgynous like early David Bowie, dosed with Syd Barret in a grungy rumble.This 60s Brit influence carries over into "Mind". There is a lo-fi element to most of this album, it seems to be exaggerated on the title track, as it bangs and clangs along more like garage punk.When the 60s Brit influence strays into folk it carries more of a Psychic TV feel. They stay in this vein to some extent on "My Body". It's not folk, but has the psychedelic mod laze coats.They hit a better middle ground between this retro hipster thing with a grunge edge on "Kaloo Kalay". The album wraps up with the 18 minute sprawl of "Enthroning the 4 Acts" which is nothing but noise, meaning it's an over extended outro. I am ever so slightly disappointed with this as my expectations were high from the other songs I had heard going into this, so I was not expecting the British hippie movement to be such a big part of it. I'll still give it an 8 as they are good sound writers and managed to sell me on most of their "Cups and Cakes" .