Crippled Children – PP PP EP PP

The scope of this label, Bart, is really impressive – focusing on Canadian bands, and releasing stuff that would most likely never been released otherwise. And doing it on cassettes, in short runs, with creative, beautiful packaging. Meaning that most likely die-hard fans (of the bands and the tape format) are the only ones interested. Keeping things economically feasibly but personable and intimate. The few releases I’ve heard have been high-quality affairs, visually and sonically.

Crippled Children sound like a nice meshing of Reversal Of Man and Pg. 99 if they played around more with melody, or a scrappier Amanda Woodward or Daitro. There’s an undercurrent – very slight, but present – of adept and well done shoegazing/emo guitarwork, but it’s tempered through layers of distortion and a vocalist who’s apparently been gargling with lye. It’s awesome stuff. Labels like Gravity, Bifocal Media or Witching Hour could’ve very easily put this out a decade ago, and it wouldn’t have been out of place to see an interview with them in Ebullition or Slave.

There seems to be a quiet resurgence of “screamo”– for lack of a better term – taking place these days, and I think it’s great. When done well, it’s a powerful medium, and Crippled Children do it very well. It’s those interlacing high-end guitar notes underneath the screaming vocals that get me every time; it’s a classic sound they’re using here, to great effect.

My only complaint has more to do with the presentation – for all of its beautiful packaging, there’s no actual band information at all, other than a small slip of paper with a myspace address on it. And again, while the packaging is fabulous, I’ve got fifth-generation tapes of twenty year-old peace punk bootlegs that have better sound quality than this – the recording itself is pretty murky. Though to be fair, a download code was included, and the songs may lose some of their muddiness in that format. That aside, this is a fantastic release.