What inspires a grungy alternative rock band to transform into a dance pop outfit? In Northern Nevada, unsurprisingly, it involves Burning Man. Electronic dance music is ubiquitous at the annual art festival in the desert, which Daniel Sion of the band Crush discovered during the week-long event in 2009.
“I hated it at first,” he says. “But by the end, I was falling in love. Like, dubstep is awesome! … Electronic dance music is very stimulating music.”
“It’s the new rock,” says his brother, Aaron.
Daniel, 21, is ostensibly the bass player, Aaron, 19, the guitar player, and Jimmy Dunn, 17, the drummer. But their current material is largely built around synthesizers and pre-programmed beats, so those narrowly defined rock band positions don’t really apply anymore. Everybody sings.
When Crush formed in 2009, the band was a quartet—Dunn, Aaron Sion, Parker Hames and Reese Swearingen—primarily inspired by ’90s modern rock radio bands like Green Day and Nirvana as well as ’60s icons like The Beatles.
Though Hames left the group in late 2011, his project Ryan Parker will also be performing at Crush’s record release party at the Knitting Factory on June 8. Aaron describes Ryan Parker as a “more scholarly, higher-art intellectual” approach to electronic music—whereas Crush happily embrace the accessible, danceable aspects of their music. Memory Motel is also on the bill.
And though they’ve evolved into the dubstep-influenced three-piece group they are today, they kept the same name because, according to Aaron, the name sums up the two sides of the band. “Crush” refers to both the sense of romantic infatuation in many of their lyrics, but also the loud bass-heavy sounds of their beats.
And they’ve retained a focus on Beatles-inspired songcraft.
“We’re still focused on writing good songs,” says Dunn.
Whereas a lot of dance music is focused on cool sounds over unrelenting rhythms, Crush writes pop tunes—with hooky beginnings, middles and ends—set to electronic beats.
The group’s new album, First Crush, features 15 original songs, all written, recorded, mixed and mastered by the band members themselves. And the tracks are actual songs, with prominent vocal melodies, lyrics about life and love, and cohesive structures. The band members also occasionally still use guitars, though now they run them into computers.
“A lot of people bag on us for using computers,” says Aaron.
“But we’re all traditionally trained jazz musicians,” says Dunn.
And the Beatles influence is still prominent in the music. They still cover the Beatles in concert, and Dunn boasts they can play “any Beatles song.”
Daniel accurately describes “Wasted Time,” possibly the strongest cut on First Crush as “Beatles meets Skrillex”—it has both catchy vocal harmonies and body-shakin’ wobble bass.
The combination of harmonious, Beatles-inspired songwriting and contemporary electronic dance music is evocative of a distinctive genre: boy band pop. The band members acknowledge that most of their fans are teenage girls, and they’re not unhappy about accidentally stumbling into this genre.
“We don’t have a problem with that,” says Aaron. “After all, the Beatles were a boy band.”